


you wait and you wonder who'll take on your odds

by paperclipbitch



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Beth's Chess Harem, Chess, Chess Metaphors, Exes to Friends to Spouses to Lovers, F/M, Friendship, Future Fic, Marriage of Convenience, Mutual Pining, Period-Typical Sexism, Phone Calls & Telephones, References to Addiction, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Smoking, Tropes, What Beth Harmon Did Next, managing addictions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:14:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 80,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29410344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: “Don’t think of it as marriage,” Benny tells her.  “Think of it as castling.”Beth raises an eyebrow.  “Am I the king or the rook in this analogy?”
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 113
Kudos: 327
Collections: Start Reading





	1. that trouble you've been looking for, it came looking for you

**Author's Note:**

> [Fic title and chapter titles from _Palace_ by Dessa]
> 
> This was meant to be a fun tropefic but it ended up taking on a life of its own and is now more a novel on what Beth decided to do with her life, with some also romance.
> 
> 1\. I skimmed the book and Benny's gambling problem is way more of a thing in that, so I've brought that over.  
> 2\. Parts of this are over-researched and parts are under-researched, but most of the period detail and chess should be... accurate. I have a timeline in my head; this story starts toward the end of 1969.
> 
> If this being a WIP worries you, I have another 22k of this written already and I know where the story is going, so it should all be finished and tidied up steadily and soon.
> 
> Many thanks and love to [trobairitz22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trobairitz22/profile) for coming up with a real plot for this fic that I mostly sidelined and for talking to me about it whenever I wanted, and [finkpishnets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/finkpishnets/profile) for reading and betaing, and helping me work out how to stick the landing.

The way that people look at Beth is starting to change.

She’s gotten used to the expressions of players she’s beaten, the range from pure hatred to scooped-out misery, the envy and admiration of spectators and competitors alike. She doesn’t care much about it, but she knows the way people react to her appearance too, the slightly different forms of envy and admiration there, sometimes a flat lust or a flatter fury, all of it easy enough to wash over her. More and more often nowadays she gets the flicker of recognition in ordinary people’s eyes, those who’ve seen her in newspapers or on television. It’s been long enough overall that she can ignore all of it, so much background noise.

Then a women’s magazine prints an article ostensibly about successful ladies. Beth doesn’t find out about it until a few months after publication when Harry mentions it in passing. She’s trying hard to stay on something resembling the straight and narrow, to lean into life and not into oblivion, and some of that involves acknowledging past sins and trying to amend them. She nods to Harry when she visits the supermarket, makes a little small talk as she firmly avoids the liquor aisle, and then every few weeks they go sit somewhere and drink sodas and talk like people do, or something close enough that it nearly looks like it. Harry’s got graduation coming up, a girl somewhere that Beth suspects that she will never be allowed to meet, and they’re trying for a friendship. They might fall a little short, but, hell, the effort is almost enough. 

“June showed it to me,” Harry explains, eyes on his coke bottle, “and we agreed it was all shit, they just want to needle you because you’re the best and some people aren’t ready for that.”

“Sure,” Beth agrees, and as soon as she gets home she calls up Jolene.

“Wasn’t worth your time,” Jolene explains when she turns up later, flings a creased magazine into Beth’s lap. Beth sees herself staring up from the page in sharp bright black and white, one of myriad pictures taken over the last couple years, with the article title splashed across beneath her: _The Cost of Success?_

“It’s all some puritan fucking bullshit,” Jolene opines, and it is, but Beth still reads every word anyway. The majority of the article isn’t about her and the parts that are don’t focus on her talents or achievements: the writer seems more concerned that she is still unmarried. Entirely unattached, travelling the world alone and going to tournaments surrounded by almost entirely male audiences. It’s all phrased with false concern, like something fundamental in Beth will shrivel and die if she doesn’t get herself into a kitchen to bring cold beer and TV dinners to a man of some kind, but she recognises the bitchiness under the words, the viciousness of the slightest implications.

Beth is too old to be a prodigy now, too successful to be written off, and the world has always had its knives out for those it cannot contain. 

“There was no point in telling you,” Townes says apologetically on the phone the next day. “I’m sorry, but it’s what the media does, you know it’s as much an enemy as a friend.”

She knows that, and she hates it, and she also wonders just how many people in her life decided to cocoon her from this; what else they’re not sharing. 

-

Jolene hasn’t finished law school yet so she can’t act on Beth’s behalf, but she has a whole lot of advice and Beth takes most of it. It turns out that she can be anchored to her life instead of drifting, dipping in and out of a bank account and hoping her home doesn’t fall down around her ears. Now she has a savings account as well as her regular one, a lawyer with an idea of what Beth specifically needs and wants from her representation, and an agent to help her actually control her career, keep all the strings of her fate in her own hands.

There was a time, shortly after her triumphant post-Russia press tour, when Beth thought she might never play chess again: that she’d peaked, that there was nothing left to conquer, that she’d strained her hopes and her fears and her talents until all that remained was a sour soup that was better viewed through the bottom of glass, that she couldn’t afford to view through the bottom of a glass. She signed autographs and smiled with all of her teeth and was whirled through a succession of celebrations and parties, new dresses, new shoes, handshakes and amateurs lining up to be checked in three moves on her part. She was tired and relieved and exhilarated and when she finally got back to Kentucky and it was all over she slept for days, waking up to periodic glasses of water and disorienting phone calls, rolling back into slumber again afterwards. 

Jolene let her stew for a little over a week and then turned up, ripped open all the drapes and took Beth to play squash. They still play pretty regularly; Jolene is getting better, Beth oddly worse, but it’s fun and it’s nice to be doing something with her whole body that isn’t sitting taut waiting for an opponent to make a miniscule movement. Beth talked about piling all her books and magazines into boxes, to closing up the sets and leaving them be, and Jolene didn’t tell her she was being dramatic or to get over it, but did ask what was going to stop Beth from digging herself back into a pit again. When Beth admitted that she didn’t know, they spent a night drinking three pots of coffee and making lists of options, of desires, of entertaining impossibilities. Those lists became concrete assistance, a crisp new phone book with a whole bunch of numbers neatly inked in, the foundations of a real future.

It’s close to year since Beth returned from Russia, one that’s passed both in a blink and in an endless grind of dragging months. Tethering herself to something like reality leaves Beth feeling impossibly heavy and there are nights when she still can’t sleep, counting sheep that turn to pawns that twirl across the dark ceiling, not a game, just a shifting of patterns too fast to distinguish but which Beth still instinctively knows as she knows the bones beneath her skin. There are still days when she wants to drink wine until she’s blind with it, wants to take a handful of pills and drop the needle on a record and spin in her living room until her knees are grazed with carpet burn and hours have vanished into the blur. Weighing the cost is enough at the moment, though something in Beth dreads the time that it finally isn’t.

“You worked hard to get to the top,” Townes pointed out over dinner, a nice restaurant, Beth’s hair curled coyly and a deep purple sheath dress. “Are you going to let these upcoming little pissants take it from you?”

Beth took the _Chess Review_ from him and looked at the pictures from the US Open. There were more women competitors than before, something Beth had never intended to spearhead but didn’t mind either, and a selection of the usual suspects kicking at each other and scrambling for places. There were plenty of photographs of Benny reaching the final, grinning with shark’s teeth, his hair a little longer, his moustache no better, no worse. He lost in the end, and Beth folded over the possibility of calling him in her mind, like she was marking the page.

“Look how many moves it took, and he got finally got Watts with a fucking _triangulation_ ,” Townes shook his head. “The chess world needs you back, Harmon.”

That night, Beth opened a set, laid out the pieces, Benny’s Black and his opponent’s White, and played through the game. The thing was kind of an embarrassing mess for a US Open final, not a banner one on either side, and she decided against calling him. If she’d just played this game and lost, she wouldn’t want to hear from anyone either. Still, there was something soothing in working it over, in deciding which moves she’d play instead, in spotting errors – so many errors – and figuring out a better endgame strategy. 

When her phone rang a week later, Beth had made some actual choices, and was more pleased to hear Benny’s weary sigh than she’d ever admit. “Alright, Beth,” he said, like it hadn’t been _months_ since they’d last talked, “let me have it.”

She could have replied in any number of ways, any number of easy lies, but instead she reached for the already close-at-hand pad with its pages of diligent notes. “You sure you can take it?”

His laugh was almost a groan, or maybe it was the other way around. “Probably not,” Benny replied, “but do it anyway.”

-

The television contract comes with a terrifying amount of small print and stipulations but a truly incredible amount of money. Beth gets not only her agent and her lawyer to look over the paperwork but Jolene and Townes too, the whole thing so overwhelming she kind of needs reassurance that it’s real. 

“ _Shit_ ,” is Jolene’s initial reaction, and she waves at the waiter and orders a martini. She catches the look on Beth’s face and shrugs. “You can’t drink, but I can. _Look_ at this.”

“Yeah,” Beth agrees, and presses her face into her hands for a moment. “I know.”

It’s a regular slot on a primetime variety show, an opportunity to demonstrate an interesting or showy move – and, of course, her own impeccable knowledge – before playing any member of the studio audience who thinks that they can beat her. They won’t, of course, and all the decent players in the chess world know this, but there are plenty of arrogant members of the public who think that being a man and having played a little chess in high school will render them capable of taking her down on national television. Beth’s role will be to take them down in as few moves as possible, sleek expertise and lots of applause. It sounds a little cheap, but mostly it sounds _fun_ , and it’s not something that’s been offered to any of the numerous men gaining success and notoriety. Just to her. Beth could think about being offended, or she could make a lot of money and wear a variety of beautiful dresses she won’t have to buy herself.

“If you don’t take this opportunity, _I_ will,” Jolene tells her, draining her glass and pushing it away to the other side of the table. Beth feels a twinge, but more one of habit than of real emotion.

“You can’t play chess,” Beth points out. Jolene has never let her teach her, never read the book she stole all those years ago. 

“For this much money, I would learn,” Jolene replies, slipping the contract back into its folder, sliding it back over the table to Beth. 

Townes says something similar to Jolene, without the martini addition, and once her lawyer has checked there are no hidden surprises in the clauses, she signs all the papers, gets her hair done, and lets them fly her out to the studio. 

-

The serious chess magazines don’t go in for gossip and report on Beth’s games, past and present, as they always have. Every other form of press is kind of a fucking mess.

It’s not as though Beth is painted explicitly as some kind of slut, they can’t do that, but she’s bored of her single status being worked into every reference to her. She almost misses when she was a schoolgirl, bored of everyone talking _constantly_ about her age and her gender, but it turns out that she’s at the ripe age for people to speculate on her romantic prospects. 

She got some post after Russia, mostly straightforward fanmail, but now she has a specific agent who can forward her letters she gets a whole lot more. Beth and Jolene set aside a Sunday and a stack of LPs to sort through them, dividing them into piles by theme. There are letters of congratulation; letters telling her she’s an inspiration; letters containing chess problems the writer has either gotten stuck on or has made up to try and trick her; letters from abroad that could contain anything because Beth’s grasp of foreign languages never did get as broad as she would have liked. There are, however, two more categories of letters: the marriage proposals, and the Disapproving Older Ladies.

“White bitches with nothing better to do,” Jolene opines, after reading one aloud. “‘ _You seem like such a nice young woman on the television, I hate to think that your life is so unfulfilled_ ’. What state does this woman live in, we can make a roadtrip to kick her ass.”

Beth feels the moue twist her mouth. “Does this one want me to marry her conveniently single son too?”

“No,” Jolene replies, dropping the letter onto the growing Disapproving Older Ladies pile.

“Pity,” Beth says, keeping her voice light, “they all sound like _such_ catches.” She waves the one she’s been skimming, neatly typewritten on letterheaded paper and everything. “This one’s going to pray for my soul, to keep me safe in the den of iniquity that a television studio is.”

“She does _know_ you’re not a virgin, right?” Jolene says, reaching to grab the letter from Beth’s hand. 

“Keeping my legs crossed and just thinking about pawn patterns,” Beth offers, fluttering her eyelashes. “Most of these women write like chess tournaments are wild bacchanalian orgies.” She tips her head, putting aside another chess problem letter that she may or may not look at later. “I mean, there were several that would’ve been _way_ more fun if they had been.”

Jolene screws up her face. “I’ve seen most of those guys you compete against,” she points out, “nobody wants to see them once their knitwear comes off.”

They both laugh, easy and maybe too hard, and Beth tells herself that she doesn’t mind all the busybodies, all the men who seem to think that she’s just dying for a husband to drag her into some sort of line.

-

It’s actually Townes who suggests that Beth is ready to start competing again; he spots the restlessness in her before she really does, still caught up in learning the rhythm of her TV work, the dressing room, the camera-ready make-up, the bright studio lights and beats to remember to hit. It’s all shine and noise and then she’s back in Kentucky again, her quiet house, every room empty, empty, empty.

“Dip a toe,” he recommends, sprawled eternally casually handsome on her couch. “I’m not saying jump back in against the Russians, but go to something more local. Remember what winning feels like.”

Something in Beth is relieved to hear this, but she can feel her shoulders hunching defensive. “I know what winning feels like, I win games all the time.”

She’d thought it would pall quickly, showily collapsing the game of an arrogant nobody in front of a whooping studio audience, but it turns out there are few things as satisfying as giving a deserving man’s ego a good, solid kick. It’s cathartic.

Townes waves a hand. “That’s not a real win and you know it. I’m talking about an actual challenge, not something you achieve in six moves. You’re a huntress, Beth, and you miss it. I know that you do.”

They agree that she’ll go to Cincinnati in a few weeks, actually accept one of the invitations that drop through the door instead of guiltily piling them up until Jolene loses her patience and throws them away. Nothing too big, not too much pressure, but a reminder that she’s not forgotten her roots. As to who she’s reminding, well, that’s possibly the real question. Townes is kind enough not to ask it; Beth doesn’t know if she’s ready to put it to herself just yet.

-

The Cincinnati tournament organisers announce that Beth Harmon will be present at her first competition since her historic win in Russia, and there’s a flurry of press interest that she thinks that she might have been trying to avoid. The phone rings semi-constantly for a few days but it’s mostly chess publications and more local papers, and she finds she isn’t lying when she says that she’s excited to be going. She doesn’t mention the patchy insomnia, sprawled in her bed staring at the ceiling, terrified that she’ll see impossible chess pieces grating across it, more terrified that she won’t.

Beth reads a few of the more recent issues of _Chess Review_ , cross-referencing some of the latest reported matches with players she might meet. She’s plenty confident, this is pretty small-time in the scheme of things, but she also doesn’t want any surprises either. It’s good to get her mind back into the rhythm of moves and countermoves; she’s not rusty, could never be rusty, but there’s a particular strand of competitive thinking that she hasn’t done in a while and she hadn’t even realised how much she’d missed it.

Five days before the competition, Beth is flicking through a fashion magazine after painting her toenails in the hope of finding something to do with the early afternoon purgatory when her doorbell goes. She’s not expecting anyone; her friends have day jobs with set hours, and she’s not the kind of famous where the press line up on your porch. She’s half-expecting an Avon lady or maybe Girl Scouts but there, afternoon sunlight golden in the tips of his hair, is Benny Watts. 

“I’m starving,” he says without preamble, “where’re you taking me?”

Beth blinks twice, and offers: “it’s customary to call first.”

“Sure,” Benny agrees, “but I was in the neighbourhood.”

“I guess seven hundred miles can be a neighbourhood,” Beth says dryly but Benny hasn’t altered his stance, hip cocked expectantly, and the part of her that wants to close the door in his face isn’t as big as the part of her that’s suddenly, brilliantly pleased, and it’s easy to slip her feet into flats, grab a coat and a handbag, and follow Benny to his car. The passenger footwell is full of empty coke bottles, candy wrappers and cigarette packets; she winds down the window to let some air in as Benny tosses his hat into the backseat and ruffles already ruffled hair.

“Have you driven straight through?” Beth asks, like she can’t tell from the dark circles under Benny’s eyes, the hint of stubble skimming his jaw. She knows the drive is the best part of the day, that he’d have had to set off some time in the darkness hours to be here by now.

“I slept in a truck stop parking lot at some point,” Benny offers, scowling a little. “Seriously, Beth, I’m starving, where are we going?”

They end up at a diner that hasn’t changed the entire time Beth has lived here; she might have fond teenage memories of coming here after school, splitting shakes with girlfriends or potential boyfriends and bickering over the jukebox, if she’d ever been that kind of girl. They’re given a booth and before they’re even seated Benny orders two cheeseburgers, coffee and coke and an extra side of fries.

“You didn’t ask what I wanted,” Beth tells him.

“Oh, kid, none of that’s for you,” Benny replies, flashing a charming smile at the waitress that he’s never given Beth. She orders coffee and cheesecake and resists the urge to kick him under the table.

They’re attracting an amount of attention, but most of that’s Benny’s appearance – even when he’s taken off the leather duster and the hat, he’s still an ostentatious mixture of silver jewellery and charisma, too many buttons open on his crumpled black shirt. The other part is simple local nosiness: people watching Beth and wondering about her companion more because they’ve watched her grow up than because they’ve seen her on television. It used to chafe on Beth but she likes it more now, there’s something oddly reassuring in the weight of their eyes.

In truth, the last time Beth spent any amount of actual time with Benny was those five hectic weeks in his shitty apartment. Before Paris, before what came after Paris, before Russia. It’s a time that she thinks back to more than she wants to, sometimes with the haze of nostalgia, sometimes with the wince of poking an old bruise. Beth was a different person then, and she learned more about herself over that month than she’ll ever honestly credit Benny with. More about her mind than she knew before, and definitely more about her body; Benny was all business over the chess board, no distractions, but when they’d exhausted the day’s plays and strategies he’d take her apart in his bed with the same dedication and thoroughness. He kissed her goodbye in the car outside the airport as she left for Paris, but she never did go back to New York. 

Benny leans back in his seat, calmly insouciant even with the exhaustion in his eyes, and watches Beth like he’s waiting for her to punch his clock. It shouldn’t feel as comfortably familiar as it does, that look, but she knows where she stands with it. She thought she’d be more wrongfooted when she next saw Benny, their only contact in the last year or so a brief grateful handshake in a crowded room before the press whisked her away, and somehow she never could get the words together to pick up the phone. 

“I take it you’re en route to Cincinnati,” Beth says, neutral ground.

A twitch of a smirk tells her what Benny thinks of her opening gambit, but he drums easy fingertips on the formica tabletop and offers: “sure, I figured I’d drop in. The calibre of player’s gone up a lot since everyone heard a certain champion was deigning to make an appearance.”

There’s an edge in his words, but not a particularly sharp one, and Beth lets it glance off her. The waitress brings their coffee and Benny’s coke, and Beth takes refuge in adding cream, stirring in the sugar.

“Don’t be like that, Beth,” Benny says, same tone as before. “You dropped off the face of the planet, I figured you’d crawled back into a bottle again. Beltik said you were doing fine, though.”

Beth stills. “You were checking up on me?”

“I had titles to win back,” Benny shrugs, ignoring the glass of ice at his elbow to drink his coke straight from the bottle.

“Well, that didn’t work out so well for you, did it?” Beth keeps her tone light too, and is rewarded with a sharp crack of Benny’s laughter.

“A fucking triangulation.” He shakes his head, rueful, and takes another sip of soda like he wishes it was something stronger. 

“So you’re in Cincinnati to prove a point?” Beth asks.

“Something like that,” Benny agrees.

Their food arrives not long after, and Benny smacks Beth’s hand away from his extra fries with a swiftness she recognises from countless rounds of speed chess: “if you wanted some, you should’ve ordered them.”

Benny eats like he’s not eaten for days, as skinny as he’s ever been but comfortably capable of putting away both cheeseburgers, the fries Beth doesn’t successfully snatch, half her cheesecake, three cups of coffee, the coke, and a chocolate shake. They discuss mutual acquaintances, matches Beth read about that he was there for, re-tread old arguments about classic moves that they’ll never agree on. It’s easy in a way that it shouldn’t be. Benny gets up, steals ketchup bottles and sugar bowls from other tables, and between them they corral half a set on the table, bicker about passed pawns and the best way to fork a bishop. By the time they’re pointedly brought the check, it’s gotten dark outside.

Beth glances at Benny and pays, and his mouth works a moment but he lets her. 

“There a motel somewhere around here?” he asks, tilting his hat easily back onto his messy hair.

She thinks about it, shifts some pieces in her head, and offers: “you can sleep in my living room.”

Benny laughs. “Place that size, you’ve gotta have a spare room.”

“At least it’s not an air mattress,” Beth responds, and watches the easy spread of his grin.

She’s expecting it to be awkward when she leads Benny into her home, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, flicking on lights as she goes. He hangs up his hat and coat like he’s done it before, looks at the half-played game she’s left on the coffee table and bends to shift a rook.

“I’ll get you, uh, bedding, I guess,” Beth offers, and he nods, waves a hand with his gaze on the pawns. She bites into her lip for a moment then goes upstairs to rummage in a closet, find pillows and a quilt, unsure how she feels about today’s development. She breathes a few times before she heads back downstairs.

Benny is sprawled fully-dressed across her couch, dead to the world. Beth hesitates, considering, and then gently places what she’s brought on the vacant armchair. Benny doesn’t stir, and she looks at his still-booted feet, his hair falling across his too-boyish face, and then shakes her head and turns out the light.

-

When Beth wakes up she freezes at the sound of someone moving around downstairs before yesterday rushes back into her head in technicolour glory, and she rolls over to press her face into a pillow and groan. It’s easy, muscle memory maybe, to be around Benny, used to their back and forth, their dynamic. It’s only when she’s alone that Beth can clearly look at this situation and wonder what the hell is actually happening here. It takes a few long minutes for her to steel herself to wash and dress, applying a careful slick of eyeliner before she ventures down to the kitchen.

“I made coffee,” Benny offers, sat comfortably at her kitchen table flicking through the latest _Chess Review_. “And someone named Jolene called to check in but you didn’t wake up, I said you’d ring her back later.”

Beth stares at him. He’s wearing another ridiculous floral silk robe, his hair shower-wet and falling in his eyes, mug of coffee gently steaming on the table in front of him.

“You made yourself at home, huh?” she says, sharp.

He shrugs, spreads his hands. “Must be some of that famous Kentucky hospitality.”

She rolls her eyes, and goes to help herself to coffee. “Did you enjoy snooping?”

“Who says I snooped?” Benny turns a page, refuses to look up. “Your bathroom cabinets are suspiciously empty, did you know?”

Beth slams her coffee down on the table hard enough for some of it to slop over the sides. “I didn’t snoop when I stayed at your place!”

“Sure you did,” Benny replies easily. “I just didn’t have anything good for you to find. Don’t think I didn’t see you trying. And anyway, I was just looking for shampoo.”

“Uh huh.” Beth levels a glare at him. “It’s generally expected that guests will bring their own toiletries.”

“I was in kind of a hurry,” Benny replies. “And hey, at least I didn’t need to use your toothbrush.”

Beth can’t suppress the shudder that ripples through her and he laughs. She takes a sip of coffee and reconsiders his words. “Why did you leave New York in a hurry in the middle of the night?”

“Maybe I thought I’d take the scenic route to the tournament,” Benny offers. “Is there breakfast?”

It’s a bad distraction and Beth doesn’t want to let him get away with it but she knows from experience that the more she presses, the more he’ll just clam up. She’ll save the interrogation for later, when he isn’t expecting it.

“Your snooping didn’t extend to the fridge?” she says.

“Your privacy is very important,” Benny replies drily, and flutters his eyelashes at her until she kicks his ankle and goes to see what she’s got to eat.

She calls Jolene back when she’s sent Benny out to get more smokes with a vague set of directions she kind of hopes will get him lost and keep him out of the house longer.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jolene asks, a thread of amusement woven through her voice. “Are you two shacked up again?”

“We weren’t shacked up before,” Beth protests. “And anyway, he’s on the couch.”

Jolene’s answering hum is disbelieving, doubtful. “Right.”

“He is!” Beth explains briefly about Benny’s sudden, random appearance. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Send his ass to a motel,” Jolene says, like she can’t believe she has to explain this. “He’s not a lost puppy, Beth, he’s an overgrown child prodigy who thinks he’s a cowboy with the shitty facial hair to match. And an actual fucking knife. Why haven’t you kicked him out yet?”

 _Because I’m fairly sure he’ll just sleep in his car if I do_ , Beth realises, but she doesn’t say it aloud, some odd protective instinct in her not wanting to admit that she suspects Benny can’t pay for a motel. It took her a long time to read between the lines of his fluctuations, to figure out that his hustles over a chess board for quick cash and penchant for all night poker games that he wouldn’t invite her to weren’t just an affectation or a way to broadcast his arrogance. 

Jolene must read something into Beth’s lingering silence, because she just sighs, and offers: “well, don’t let him answer your phone anymore, anyway. Your agent will have a shitfit.”

“Oh,” Beth says, “ _shit_.”

She actually hadn’t thought that hard about the lifestyle clauses in her contract; there aren’t that many of them and in her head the whole ‘clean living’ part mostly meant that she wouldn’t be drunk or stoned in public anymore, and since that was what she was aiming for anyway it didn’t seem like it would be a problem. Beth turns the situation over a couple of times in her head and decides that maybe the studio would not be happy if anyone found out that she had Benny staying in her home, even in a different room, and the excuse _we’re not sleeping together anymore_ probably wouldn’t improve it any.

“I’m not gonna tell you what to do,” Jolene says, “but for fuck’s sake be _careful_ , that asshole can bring the whole damn house of cards down around you.”

“Wrong game,” Beth says, to hide the way her lips have gone numb.

-

The day before they’re due to leave for the tournament, Beth walks into the kitchen for morning coffee to find Benny smoking and frowning at a piece of paper. He flicks a glance at her and then looks back at the page again, taking a slow, angry drag. She assumes it’s some of the notes he’s been making on recent games – way more copious and detailed than the ones Beth has been, but he’s the one with a fresh humiliating defeat – until he turns his annoyed attention to her.

“Do you get a lot of letters like this one?”

Beth feels her stomach drop, irritation and humiliation and something weirdly like panic ripping through her. “You started opening my mail?”

“You weren’t opening it,” Benny replies, waving the cigarette dismissively. “And answer the fucking question, Jesus, Beth.”

She swallows, tells herself to remain calm. “I don’t know, Benny, because I haven’t seen the letter, you’re the one reading my private correspondence.”

He all but throws the paper at her, disgust in his expression. Beth is a little apprehensive as she starts to read but it’s actually not too bad, another bored housewife lashing out at Beth because she isn’t tied to the kitchen by her apron strings and hiding the vitriol poorly under the guise of concern. She shrugs, drops it half-read on the table and reaches for one of the cigarettes, noticing as she does so that there are multiple letters spread around Benny’s coffee cup and ashtray. She needs to yell at him about this, she thinks, make sure that he knows this is unacceptable behaviour, but there’s something oddly like shame sitting on her tongue.

“Any viable marriage proposals?” she asks at last, when she can trust herself to speak. She doesn’t mind when Jolene sees all these messages, actually feels better about it all when they’re sifting through them together, but something about Benny reading them makes her feel like the kid she was when they first met, awkward angles and shy and apparently entirely unmemorable. 

“Sure,” Benny replies, brittle, “if you like smug assholes and their meddling mothers.”

Beth’s hands are shaking and she thinks for a split second about tranquilisers and sour red wine, the cigarette between her fingers nowhere near enough. “Are any of them rich?”

“Fuck.” Benny slams his hands on the table and it takes all of Beth’s will not to jump. “The way these strangers think they can talk to you-”

“Stop,” Beth snarls. “You turn up out of nowhere looking like twenty kinds of shit and think you can just worm your way into my life and start passing judgements?”

“This is bullshit,” Benny snaps, waving another piece of paper at Beth. 

“I know,” she says, heart thudding in her chest and her throat and her temples. “But it’s none of your goddamn business, Benny Watts. Or do you want to tell me why you had to run from New York in such a hurry in a car covered in unpaid parking tickets?”

Beth wonders, briefly, if Benny is going to slap her; she sees in his expression that he’s wondering it too, something sharp and hard and dark in his eyes before he sighs and stubs out his cigarette. He won’t look at her, and Beth shoves the letters into a pile in the middle of the table and drinks her cooling coffee and practices breathing and curling her toes, Benny pushing hands through his hair in her peripheral vision.

“You deserve better than this,” he grits out at last.

“Yes,” Beth agrees. “That’s why I don’t open my mail.”

Benny nods, twice, like he’s confirming something with her and something with himself, and gets up to make more coffee. Beth studies her nails, and makes sure her voice is quiet when she says: “do you need money?”

His shoulders tense, take a long long moment to relax again. “Not yet,” he replies, tight but not angry, and Beth exhales the smoke and the strain and the worst of her bitterness. 

“Okay.” The word feels good in her mouth, the sweet relief of an unexpected but hoped-for adjournment, and the sudden cessation of fury in the kitchen leaves her feeling almost dizzy. She says it again, just for good measure: “okay.”

-

“You never did show me around,” Benny remarks when they’re driving out of town.

Beth slips on her sunglasses and leans back in her seat to watch the houses skim past. “I never said that I would.”

“You could’ve done some kind of Beth Harmon retrospective,” he says, and he’s needling her a little but it’s just his regular brand of quiet antagonism, he can’t function without it. “A tour of the gymnasiums and rec rooms you won games in, the porches you let all those fumbling teenage boys kiss you on…”

“Sure,” Beth says, brittle. “I could’ve taken you to the drugstore where I got my mother’s tranquilisers that then became _my_ tranquilisers and where I stole chess magazines that I couldn’t afford. Ooh, and at least three liquor stores, you’ll love those.”

Benny says nothing, and Beth lets them sit for a while in a silence that’s not entirely uncomfortable, breeze from the open window ruffling his hair in her peripheral vision.

“I’m not saying high school was a picnic for me, either,” Benny says at last.

“What, the great Benny Watts wasn’t valedictorian prom king?” Beth asks dryly.

“Ha.” Benny taps his fingers on the steering wheel, eyes on the road. “I’m sure you remember, everyone loves skinny chess nerds who haven’t had their growth spurt yet, they’re real popular.”

Beth smiles a little, remembers the cold armour she built around herself so she didn’t mind the distance between her and her peers so much, looks at Benny’s shitty attitude and it’s still shitty, yeah, but she can see some of why he might have chosen to build it in the first place.

She reaches for the radio, fiddles with the dial until a burst of static gives way to the low dark hum of a familiar baseline. Benny makes a soft noise, and Beth remembers his terrible collection of pretentious records, not one Beatles album among them.

“They kept playing this half the way down,” Benny says. “So the British guys have discovered drugs, haven’t we all.”

Beth slants a look at him but he doesn’t look at her, and she suspects that even if she explicitly asked he wouldn’t tell her. There’s got to be a reason why Benny barely drinks alcohol, one that has nothing to do with Beth’s own problems and his opinions of them, but she couldn’t work it out of him back when they were as close as they’ll ever be and she knows he won’t give her anything now. He’s not big on handing things out if they haven’t been earned. Instead, she taps the beat of _Come Together_ on her knee, hums a little, enjoying the irritation in Benny’s posture out of the corner of her eye.

When the song switches Benny groans but leans over to turn up the radio anyway, because some things are inevitable, and there are some songs you can’t _not_ sing along to.

“ _We’re caught in a trap, I can’t walk out, because I love you too much baby…_ ”

It’s a popular song, Beth’s heard it on the radio and in stores lately, learning the words almost by osmosis. It’s easy to belt it out with Benny, the little car full of winter sunlight and a little too much breeze, both of them hamming up their Elvis impressions. Beth’s pretty sure she’d be mortified if anyone else caught them, crooning along a little too expertly to this song, but she doesn’t mind as much when it’s Benny. They’ve humiliated each other enough times over the years that this doesn’t count as anything at all.

“ _We can’t go on together with suspicious minds,_ ” they bawl, catch each other’s eyes and burst out laughing.

Beth thinks vaguely that she probably shouldn’t be enjoying this so much.

A couple of hours and a near-argument later, Benny leaves Beth and her suitcase enough blocks from the hotel that she can justify catching a cab. The driver makes cheerful conversation about how many people he’s driven to this _chess convention_ and Beth smiles and nods, adds bland replies, and tries not to think about the nerves creeping in the closer that she actually gets. She’s not been to a Cincinnati meet in years, the city doesn’t look all that familiar through the car’s windows, and for a few minutes she feels impossibly small and lost, thirteen and stumbling all over again.

The Gibson doesn’t seem to have changed all that much in the last six years, although it looks a lot smaller than it first did, and Beth’s room looks a little cluttered and tired. She thinks of Alma, settling herself on the end of a bed and talking about _a pleasant room_ and she has to fall back against the door, closing her eyes against hot tears and a sharpness in her throat. That’s the problem, sometimes, with retracing your steps.

-

Every head turns as Beth makes her way to sign in for the competition; she gets some smiles and nods, a few offers of _welcome back_ from people she knows and people she doesn’t, and is aware of the low buzz of conversation surrounding her. The men at the desk stand up to shake her hand and tell her how pleased they are that she’s come, and Beth feels herself flush as she admits how pleased she is to be there. Her hand trembles a little as she fills out her form but she thinks that she might be the only one who notices.

She wanders through the lobby, exchanges greetings with a few people she recognises, lets herself enjoy the wince on some men’s faces as they realise they stand a good chance of being grindingly defeated. It feels _right_ to be back among real chess players again; Beth spent her adolescence in places like this, the smell of dust and nervous sweat and hair oil, so insulated and isolated in her own determination and desperation that she didn’t realise that she’d carved out a little niche of her own in this environment, or that it had carved out a niche in her in return. There are a few women scattered about, some clutching notebooks or strategy manuals in nervous hands, some looking far more composed than Beth can ever remember being. They exchange awkward nods with her, politely distant but acknowledging camaraderie nonetheless, a start of something.

Townes is meant to be here somewhere – he’s apparently taking her for dinner tonight – and Beth lets her feet carry her up the stairs. She skims her fingertips up the handrail, the smooth polished wood cool under her touch, and thinks to herself _all pawns and no hope_. Benny claims insistently and constantly that he doesn’t remember meeting her when she was the most awkward of schoolgirls, but Beth has never forgotten. She doesn’t forget much; it’s one of the reasons drinking is always so appealing. Caught up in nostalgia thick enough to choke on, Beth makes it all the way up the stairs before she realises the arrogant voice holding court isn’t a part of her memories but is really Benny, taking up far more of a chair than his slight frame can really justify and telling an anecdote about the Pirc Defence that Beth has heard before. The Pirc is too much of a risk for tournaments, but get your timing right and there’s a quiet satisfaction to it.

Beth pauses on the edge of the little group, unsure if she should linger and offer the observation that a solid Austrian Attack can shatter the Pirc like candy, as Benny well knows, or if she should leave him to his ego exhibition. They’ve only been apart a few hours, there’s no need to speak again so soon, but she’s still a little discombobulated from being alone amongst the present and the past. She’s still pondering when Benny glances up. He impossibly manages to slouch lower in his chair, tipping his hat back, playing a gunslinger when their nemesis walks into the bar; he’s never admitted to practicing all this in a mirror but Beth is sure that he did, at least to begin with.

“The queen graces us with her presence,” he says drily, a little mocking but not cruel, lacing his fingers over his stomach as he considers her. “And just when did you arrive at this Heartbreak Hotel, Miss Harmon?”

Beth is aware of the attention on her, on both of them, people in other parts of the room catching her name and turning to look; she scrapes together a smile. “Benny Watts. And there was me thinking you were all shook up after your Open loss.”

Something competitive glitters in Benny’s eyes. “Don’t be cruel, Beth.”

Some part of Beth is desperate not to appear overfamiliar in front of all these people, half of whom are murmuring about her already, and some other part is thinking that she’ll definitely lose if she straight-up calls Benny a hound dog. “Maybe you should just surrender,” she offers mildly.

Benny indicates the chess board beside him, demonstrative pieces scattered across it. “Want in? It’s now or never,” he tells her.

“That’s all right,” Beth replies, and spins on her heel before Benny can come up with a rejoinder and she has to refer to him as the devil in disguise. She’s aware of gaining more attention as she keeps walking, relieved that she can still garner it among serious players, whatever the Federation has to say about her, wishing just a little that she was still a slip of a girl who could pass mostly unnoticed. 

The twins find her, apparently by following the trail of gossip, and envelop her in almost matching embraces before bearing her off to the hotel bar for too-sweet sodas and people watching. They help her pick out some of the newer faces in the crowd, matching up names she’s read on game reports but not faced in person, dropping in any facts they’ve gleaned alongside a range of rumours. In some ways, it reminds Beth of listening to the high school girls lined up in front of the bathroom mirrors, pointedly ignoring Beth while they tossed social currency back and forth.

“Are you playing?” she asks at last, when most of the people sitting around them have stopped staring and the flow of new arrivals has slowed.

“God, no,” Matt says on an easy laugh. “Mike’s threatening to do Kentucky, though.”

They’ve stayed closer to chess than Harry has, keeping a foot in the door of the world rather than letting it bang closed behind them. Beth’s glad; they were the first friends she made for herself after losing Jolene, and it’s good to be able to talk about chess with them and have them understand what she’s really saying. She’s done this on and off over the years, sat in numerous hotels and halls safely bracketed by the twins and their easy conversation.

“Go on, tell her,” Matt says, and Mike’s cheeks pink a little. 

Beth twists to face him. “Tell me what?”

“I’m engaged,” Mike announces, looking embarrassed but pleased.

“Oh, Mike!” Beth gives him an impulsive hug. “Tell me about her.”

It takes a little more prodding but soon Mike is telling Beth about the girl he met at work, their plans for a spring wedding, while Matt teasingly interjects from time to time. 

“Susan even plays chess!” Mike finishes.

“She’s better than he is,” Matt remarks, which makes Mike smile ruefully and nod.

“I’d like to meet her,” Beth says.

“She’d love to meet you,” Mike replies. “She always watches you on television, I don’t think she really believes I know you.”

“We’ll have to fix that,” Beth smiles. Her stomach flutters a little at the first reference to the show; she knows that Townes and Jolene are pleased for her, and that Benny hasn’t explicitly said that he disapproves but he definitely _does_ , and she’s been a little nervous about reaching out to ask anyone else.

“When we’re back home,” Mike says, and they clink glasses, drink to it.

-

Benny wins Cincinnati.

It comes down to the two of them like pretty much everyone knew it was going to, other competitors grudgingly or gratefully or resignedly accepting defeat through the rounds as E. Harmon and B. Watts climb the boards. In the evenings Beth replays the games with herself or with Townes, occasionally sits with the twins and watches Benny cheerfully hustling the cocky or the unwary with rounds of knife-sharp speed chess. He doesn’t offer a round to her and she doesn’t ask for one; she’s not sure which of them would come off worse in the end.

There’s no clear victor for most of the game, the two of them stepping in and out of each other’s traps with clean precision. Beth watches Benny’s hands and the board and doesn’t look at the audience, even as she senses their growing admiration, doesn’t look at Benny’s face because she knows all the different expressions he can wear over a game and none of them will tell her his next move. There are two or three moments when she notes an official shifting, clearly hoping that they’re about to call it a draw, but then she or Benny nimbly kicks the other’s net apart and the game carries on, tension slowly creeping up Beth’s spine the longer the clocks tick. 

It hurts more than it should when Benny finally pins her king and Beth tips the piece over, listens to it clatter against the board in the silence before the applause begins. Benny holds out a hand and for a brief second Beth wants to refuse, to behave like a brat and shove the board at him, but she takes his warm sure grip and when he squeezes, she squeezes back.

There are flashbulbs and photographs; Beth catches Townes’ conciliatory smile from behind his camera amid the reporters. She wants a drink, wants to blur the bitterness of the defeat on her tongue, wants to lie on the anonymous hotel room bed and stare at nothing at all on the ceiling while her brain drowns itself. She doesn’t want to smile and admit to her first public loss since Russia, doesn’t want to say something polite and neutral about Benny, doesn’t want to play the dignified loser. She wants to hurl Benny’s stupid hat across the room and scream until there’s no one here but her and the relief of silence.

“Good,” Benny says under his toothy grin, letting their shoulders graze for a moment.

“What?” Beth asks. Just another minute, maybe two, and she can escape to her room and a burst of angry tears.

“You want my head on a fucking spike,” Benny replies, low enough for only her to hear, lips barely moving. “You should. Anything less would be a disservice to us both.”

Beth flees the scene with grace before they can talk anymore; a furious cry in the shower, a clean dress and a fresh coat of lipstick set her up for the evening, dinner with Townes and the twins. All of them stick to water all night, and Beth wants to spitefully demand a Gibson or a glass of wine, just to see what any of them do. In the end she behaves herself, glad to have people around her even with the loss today a physical, thumping ache behind her breastbone. When she blinks, she can see the final click of Benny setting down the Black rook, inexorable.

Back at the hotel, the twins waved off – they’re driving back early in the morning, earlier than Beth’s willing to surface to say goodbye – Townes considers her in the dim light of the lobby.

“Do you want me to stay tonight?” he asks quietly.

Beth swallows a lump in her throat formed of a half-dozen emotions and says: “I apparently signed a contract that promised I wouldn’t have unchaperoned men in my hotel room.”

Townes grimaces, but offers: “I’ve had to get very good at discretion, Harmon.”

“I know.” Beth looks down at the floor for a moment, her slip-on heels, his shiny brogues, and feels a wave of something like exhaustion run through her. “I’ll be all right. Thank you.”

The halls feel too long as she trudges back to her room, late enough that it’s mostly quiet in the hotel, the occasional burst of voices or static from the television as she passes each closed door. She’ll have to set the game up and play through it when she gets back to her room even though she doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to poke at a wound so open and so fresh. The need to do it is greater than self-preservation, the way she laid out her games against Borgov again and again, watched herself lose over and over and over. 

Conversation in the corridor has her ducking back into the stairwell, not wanting to be seen right now, not feeling like this. She’s too far away to make out much, a man and a woman, voices overlapping, rising and falling. Beth digs her nails into the palms of her hands, forces breaths into her aching chest, tells herself that in another moment she can be back in her room where the rest of the world can be held at bay with closed drapes and a locked door. No one hangs out in hotel hallways at night, whoever it is will go away soon enough. 

The woman laughs, high and a little breathy, and the conversation stops for a long, heavy second. Beth doesn’t have time to get hopeful when there’s another giggle, a hiss of _Benny!_ that carries right the way down the hall, then a low laugh that’s too blurry for Beth to tell if it’s actually Benny’s or not. A door slams, and Beth stands in the silence and counts to ten before she ventures into the empty corridor, scurrying to her room with her heartbeat thudding in her ears.

It’s a gruelling game to play through, their moves so densely knitted it’s hard to pick them apart and suggest which one was better for most of the middle game, hard to find an alternative move that would snip through the threads and give one of them an upper hand. Beth debates putting on the television just for background noise, debates calling to see what room service have handy at this time of night when you want an easy oblivion. Ennui hits her in the end and she goes to lie on her bed, listlessly staring at the light fittings, pawns moving in front of her eyes and always, always that damn final rook.

Finally, Beth gives up, puts a cardigan on over her crumpled dinner dress, slips her shoes back on and goes downstairs. The lobby is empty; the concierge glances at her but Beth doesn’t engage and he turns his attention back to the book spread open on his desk. The chairs are all empty, spectators long gone, and the rooms they played in are all locked up. Beth wanders, restless, and finds the closed bar. It’s merely roped off, and no one is watching when Beth slips around the barrier and walks into the dark.

There’s a click of pieces against a board and for a second her heart leaps into her throat. Then her eyes adjust and she sees someone sitting at one of the tables by the window, chess board lit by the bright winter moonlight streaming in. A childish part of Beth thinks about ghosts, but she knows that posture by now and walks over.

Benny’s face is streaked with silver in the moonlight, all his jewellery shining, and he startles when he looks up and sees Beth, maybe a little ghostly herself in her pale dress. He considers her for a long moment, eyes too dark to read, body utterly still.

“It’s coming down to luck,” he says at last, and Beth drops her gaze to their game laid out on the table in front of him. The Black pieces are barely visible, the White ones almost glowing. 

“Luck’s a loser’s word,” Beth replies as she sits down opposite him; he’s never said this to her, but she’s heard him say it to others, usually after he’s soundly beaten them.

“So tell me you did a better job prying this one apart.” Benny spreads his hands. “This is my third time through and it could just as easily have been you.”

“But it wasn’t.” The words are sour, and Beth grits her teeth. Benny dips his head to look at the board again and she studies him a moment, his messy hair, a dark smudge on his cheek that in better lighting would almost definitely be lipstick. “Shouldn’t you be… sleeping?” she asks at last, shrinking back from her original question because what does it really matter, anyway.

Benny shrugs, shifts a knight. Beth remembers that move: it was one of hers. “Shouldn’t you be?” he asks. “Or was this meant to be a relapse?”

Hotels do not leave their liquor lying around for their guests to acquire; Beth knows this of old, from longer nights than this one.

“I don’t know,” she admits, and replies to the knight by pushing a Black pawn, Benny’s next move. The whole game seems carved into her skin, painful and irrevocable. She hadn’t even known how _badly_ she needed the win until she was halfway through the match and saw the possibility of winning halving, then halving again.

Benny shifts the hanging White bishop instead of replying. Beth pushes the Black pawn again, the best of the available moves, and Benny moves a White pawn to meet it, to strand them gridlocked in the centre of the board.

“Was this what you needed?” Beth asks a while later, when they’ve gone through the next few moves and Benny’s silently tried shifting a White rook instead of the knight that Beth originally moved and then carefully moved it back after staring at the board a while longer.

“The win or the money?” he responds, not looking up as he places the knight down.

“Either,” Beth says. “Both.”

“Yes,” he says, and reaches to shift the Black knight when Beth doesn’t. 

She wants him to apologise and she doesn’t want him to, and she wants it to have been someone, anyone other than him that she lost to, and she’s glad that it was only him who could beat her. Beth thinks about shoving the board at Benny, sending pieces scattering, pawns lost under the chairs until morning. 

“Can you go back to New York now?” she asks at last, still looking at where she castled hours ago and wondering if she shouldn’t have after all. The rook protects the king, sure, but then the rook is more pinned than she usually likes. 

“I leave in the morning,” Benny says, moving the White queen to take a Black bishop. Beth remembers how it felt to do that the first time, but it didn’t mean anything in the end. He lifts his head. “Are you okay getting back home?”

“Townes is driving me back tomorrow,” Beth explains.

“Sure he is,” Benny says, nodding, and Beth isn’t sure what his tone means; she opens her mouth and closes it again, unsure what she wants to actually say. She doesn’t know what Benny knows or thinks or has extrapolated, and regardless she’s not going to reveal a secret that isn’t hers in the first place.

Instead of replying, she pushes a Black pawn, forks a White knight and a White pawn, and gets up from the table.

“‘Night, Beth,” Benny calls when she’s most of the way across the room; she freezes a second, but doesn’t look back.

-

After Cincinnati, Beth throws herself into preparing for the Kentucky State Championship. She lost her title after Paris, the one she’d proudly held since she was fifteen. At the time told herself it was too small to matter, but she wants it back now. 

“There’s my crazy girl,” Jolene says when she comes over for dinner one night, finds six chess boards scattered across the living room in various states of play. They eat pizza and Beth scrambles for conversation that isn’t about chess players alive and dead and what they thought the best opening moves were. Jolene doesn’t mind, full of stories from school, from the law office, from the various lives she lives while Beth just lives this one and can barely keep her grip on it.

“I’ll come watch,” Jolene offers.

“You’ll be bored,” Beth replies, though she’d like to have Jolene there; she’s missed having family spectating, even if said family doesn’t understand what the hell is going on.

“I won’t be if you make a stuffy white boy cry,” Jolene tells her, grinning with all her teeth. “Maybe two, remind them what a shark bitch you can be.”

Beth laughs, really laughs, and feels a little better about the grim tone of the serious chess reviews that praise the skill of the match between her and Benny but worry that Elizabeth Harmon has lost her edge, about the sly tone of the magazine that printed photographs of her in the hotel bar with Matt and Mike, in a restaurant with Townes, looking briefly at Benny as he grinned through his win. The magazine mildly suggested that Beth needed more practice and less of a social life, but the darker implications were painfully clear. Her agent hasn’t said anything explicit, but he was the one to post her the magazine in the first place.

It’s a different high school this year but the atmosphere is the same as it always is, the waxed floor and vague old sweat in the air of the gym, the jaded expressions of the masters and the anxious ones of the amateurs proud to scrape this far. The press is local, Townes turning up without his camera but promising a column that talks a lot about her talent and absolutely nothing else. Jolene comes with candy and a leather jacket that Beth immediately covets, while Matt’s there rolling his eyes as his brother signs up and then shyly introduces Beth to Susan, a sweet blonde who keeps proudly glancing at the engagement ring with its diamond chips like it’s five times bigger than it is. She immediately asks Beth a question about the French Defence and has intelligent follow-up questions too; “maybe you’re the one who should be playing instead,” Beth says.

Susan giggles but throws a look at Mike and says: “maybe next year” in a contemplative tone.

Most of the matches Beth plays are pretty simple, players she can checkmate in less than two dozen moves, but it’s still enjoyable to run through her favourite tactics with flesh and blood humans, even the ones that leave afterward looking frustrated and just a little disgusted. One of the men she beats in the second round mutters something derogatory about her TV appearances; Beth misses all the words that aren’t _bitch_ , but the gist is pretty clear. Later, Jolene tells her that she went out to the parking lot to kick him in the balls but found the guy crying in his car instead, and presses a proud kiss to Beth’s cheek.

For the final, Harry and an awkward brunette he identifies as June – who definitely doesn’t know about the ugly youthful history between Harry and Beth, thank heaven for small mercies – show up to watch too. Jolene raises her eyebrows but refrains from saying anything, and when Beth looks up in the middle of a match that’s a little taxing but nothing she can’t handle, she sees Wexler has arrived from somewhere, whispering something into Matt’s ear that makes him grin. 

Beth reclaims her title, the first one she ever wrapped her determined fingers around, to whoops and cheers from her little support group. They whisk her off to dinner, all of them: Townes and Jolene, Matt and Mike and Susan, Harry and June, Wexler. It shouldn’t work, Beth is sure that it won’t, but everyone is cheerful and proud and in the mood to enjoy themselves, and somehow they all manage to sit around a table and make a ludicrous amount of noise.

“What’re you even doing here, Wexler?” Beth manages to ask halfway through dinner. At one end of the table, Matt and Susan are attempting to explain what looks like a smothered checkmate to June, with the aid of a salt cellar and three wine glasses, while Harry and Townes are animatedly discussing a television show Beth has never heard of.

“Catching up with some old friends,” Wexler shrugs. “Mike told me you were competing and I thought I’d stop in on the way, watch you crush some unworthy opponents. Levertov was supposed to come too, the whole trip was his idea, but Benny dragged him into one of his fucking all-night poker games and they were still at it when it was time to go, so I left him behind.”

“How is the cowboy prince?” Jolene asks, which makes Wexler choke on his beer and laugh. 

“Ah, he’s Benny Watts,” he says, on an eyeroll that’s part fondness and part frustration.

Beth says nothing, not sure what Jolene is doing, not sure what she herself is thinking or feeling. She sips her coke and watches as Jolene finds a clean serviette, prints a few words on it in ballpoint before passing it to Wexler.

“Get that skinny white boy to mail one of these to Beth,” she orders, and shrugs at Beth’s glare and Wexler’s bemused expression. “You try getting radical Black poetry collections out here, then get back to me.”

Despite her best attempts to derail it, the table’s conversation eventually drifts to media coverage of Beth. All of her friends have seen patronising articles, turns of phrase that can be read more than one way. Beth has never liked the way journalists talk about her gender and almost nothing else, but it’s definitely getting worse and she hates that it’s getting so stupidly noticeable. 

“What you need,” Susan says thoughtfully, “is a husband.”

Beth narrowly avoids swallowing her drink the wrong way. “ _What_?” she demands.

“I don’t mean a real husband,” Susan explains quickly. “A husband like movie stars have, you know, to carry your purse and light your cigarettes and look at you silently but adoringly.”

There’s a long moment of silence. “…it’s a shitty idea but it’s not a _bad_ one,” Jolene says at last.

“No,” Beth says. “That’s… I can’t just _give in_ to this.”

Her friends are all exchanging glances. None of them look comfortable, but all of them seem to be considering it like getting herself a random dummy husband is a viable option. It isn’t. Beth will not let it be. If she has to win every fucking tournament in the world to make people look at her and see her as more than a delicate young woman, then that is what she will do. 

“No,” she repeats, making sure to meet as many pairs of eyes as will meet hers. “Never. Okay?”

-

Ten days later there’s a small package in Beth’s mailbox alongside six marriage proposals, five chess puzzles, three letters of congratulation and two people who think she’s setting a bad example to young women and that she had the devil with her in Cincinnati. 

“Like he doesn’t have better things to do,” Beth mutters to no one.

Inside the package is a slim book of poems, _The First Cities_ by Audre Lorde. The one Jolene demanded in the restaurant; Beth had forgotten. She carefully lays the volume to one side but there’s nothing else, just the brown paper wrapping. She skims the pages of the book and there’s nothing there either. 

Beth isn’t disappointed, because there is nothing to be disappointed about.

-

Life carries on. Beth trains for several hours a day, reads books she’s read before and forces her way through the footnotes, takes out subscriptions to several international chess magazines and reads about rising European stars, plays through games against phantom competitors she has yet to meet. When that doesn’t work she takes long aimless walks, nods awkwardly to her neighbours and shifts pawns between the clouds with her hands curled in the pockets of her coat. She listens to the radio and learns the words to all the new hits regardless of whether she likes them or not, thinking about the teenage girls gathered around the television singing along like their lives depended on it, the wall of glass Beth felt between them and her. She does handstands against the living room wall and recites strings of strategy squares or Russian phrases while the blood rushes into her head and her wrists start to tremble.

The truth about staying sober is that it’s _boring_. There were endless days and nights before, but they drifted shiftlessly past when she’d taken pills or drunk enough wine to make everything blindingly clear, hours gone while she played games across the ceiling or the inside of her eyelids, listened to records until the needle slipped into an empty groove. Now Beth is determined to stay afloat, whatever the cost, she finds she has more time than she knows what to do with and not enough to fill it with. There are her television appearances of course, but they slip by almost too fast, as though the hours she spends under the bright lights with every eye on her are siphoned away and pumped into the rest of the week. 

She’s not alone, of course. She and Jolene are carefully twining their lives back together, phonecalls and dinners and trips to the movies. Townes calls or drops by when he can, takes her out to restaurants where they both dress in their finest and catch people’s eyes for their mutual beauty more than Beth’s fame. And she still exchanges her periodic careful pleasantries with Harry, spends an afternoon with Mike and Susan and three different chess boards, starts the slow but not dissatisfying practice of postal chess with a Russian woman who writes her moves in thick black marker on postcards. Beth’s life has plenty of people in it, she isn’t lonely.

The twins invite her on a roadtrip with them and Susan to a tournament in Washington, and Beth barely hesitates before she agrees, packs new pamphlets and an old board in her suitcase. She and Susan sit in back, sing along to the radio and flick through _Chess Review_ back issues while Matt and Mike take turns behind the wheel and good-naturedly argue about the best route and which way up the map should go. 

“Is Borgov as handsome in person?” Susan asks, studying a photograph.

Beth blinks twice; in all those years of him looming over her, a sword of Damocles, he became something more than human. Now she’s beaten him and they’ve settled into something like mutual respect, she’s still kind of working out how to recategorize him. But she looks at what Susan is looking at, the neat hair, the sharp suit, and considers.

“He’s a gentleman,” she decides at last.

“He looks it,” Susan agrees, tapping the page. “When chess is played seriously, I think the competitors should look dapper. Not like that Watts guy.” She raises her voice. “Honey, didn’t you say that Watts was coming to this meet?”

“He is?” Beth asks, her mind rifling through a selection of thoughts and emotions too quick to define any of them and settling at last on a ridiculous wish that she’d packed a different shade of lipstick. 

“I said he might be there,” Mike says, craning around in his seat to look at them. “I mean, who really knows the ways of The Great Benny Watts?”

Beth laughs because it’s the easiest of all the available options.

-

The rooms are a little poky but the hotel itself is nice enough, high-ceilinged conference rooms with big windows and comfy chairs in the lobby and bar. There’s a buzz when Beth walks in that spreads quickly and changes key into something slightly relieved when she confirms that she’s just there to watch. She studies the competitor lists for names she knows and finds a few, none of them Benny. This doesn’t mean anything; he’s always liked to make an entrance.

They all eat dinner in the hotel restaurant; Matt manages to round up Wexler and Levertov, and Weiss comes over to say hello and ends up staying for coffee. The place is busy, the happy hum of people looking forward to a good weekend, and Beth decides she’s glad she came. Wexler pulls out a set and he, Mike and Susan start working through a set of problems; Susan’s slow but she’s methodical and right more often than not. Levertov talks about the New York chess scene and Beth doesn’t ask and doesn’t ask and _doesn’t ask_.

The next day, Benny’s name is neatly printed on the list, his first match lined up. Most people are going to watch him, Beth catches his name again and again from passers-by, but she tells the others to go without her: “I’ve seen him take enough poor suckers down to last a lifetime”. Instead, she drifts around the lower ranked games; there’s nothing ground-breaking and a lot of awkward mistakes and clumsiness, but in a few places she spots sparks of potential, makes a mental note or two that she’ll try and pass on later. 

After the day’s games have closed, Benny has his usual crowd of admirers around him. Beth ponders going over, knows that he’d make space for her, but she realises that she honestly doesn’t know what to say. She eats dinner alone in her room and falls asleep faster than she expected, waking up still-clothed on top of the covers in the early hours of the morning with the lights blazing, lies still for several moments wondering where she is.

The second afternoon, with Mike and Susan off for some sightseeing or shopping or something, Matt accompanies Weiss to play an adjournment and Beth volunteers to meet Levertov downstairs to help replay the game that knocked him out. She’s waylaid by two young women who ask her to sign copies of _Sports Illustrated_ and want to talk about their high school’s chess club; they’re eager and sweet and Beth doesn’t mind giving them her time, waving them off a little bemused but pleased nonetheless. She makes her way to the lobby and is stopped again on the landing by a man who steps into her path.

“Miss Harmon,” he says, and Beth takes the hand he holds out. “I’m Albert Stone.”

“Nice to meet you.” His grip is firm, just a little too warm, and he doesn’t immediately let go.

“I’ve written to you,” he says.

He’s taller than Beth, very neat dark hair, largely nondescript features, a slightly faded argyle sweater. She takes all this in before her gaze drops down to where his hand is still wrapped around hers.

“Thank you,” Beth says carefully. “I, um, I get a lot of letters.”

“I’ve written to you eight times,” Stone tells her, and even though his tone is quiet and mild something in it makes the hairs on the back of Beth’s neck stand up. She swallows and forces herself to meet his gaze. He’s staring at her, unblinking. “I’ve asked you to marry me.”

“That’s very flattering,” Beth says quickly, trying to pull her hand out of his grip, but he tightens it. “I’m not looking to get married right now, thanks.” When he still doesn’t let go, she drags up an awkward smile. “Sorry, I’m meeting a friend, I need to go.”

“One of your boyfriends?” Stone steps a little closer and he’s by no means a giant but there’s an air of menace to him. Beth reminds herself that they’re in public, there are plenty of people around, nothing will happen, but her hand is slowly being crushed and her stomach is churning. “Everyone knows about them,” he continues, low voice turning a little uneven. “Everyone knows what you are.”

Beth wrenches her hand back, biting the inside of her lower lip against the pain, and turns and walks away as fast as she can without drawing attention to herself, aware of Stone’s gaze between her shoulder blades. 

Benny’s sat opposite Levertov at a corner table, lecturing: “your diagonals are a fucking mess, _that’s_ your problem” and waving a White bishop that Beth remembers was lost pretty early in the match. Beth makes a beeline for the chair between them, aware the room is shivering around her and just wanting to sit down before something in her collapses.

“Nice of you to show,” Benny drawls from beneath his hat, putting the bishop to one side with a damning click as Beth drops into the chair like her legs have been cut out from beneath her. 

“I was thinking about your knights,” she tells Levertov, but the words come out too quick, jumbling together. She reaches for the White knight that he should have deployed earlier but her hand is shaking so badly that she knocks most of the pieces over, pawns rolling off the board all over the table. 

“Beth?”

“I’m fine,” she says, but her vision has tunnelled and there’s a weird ringing in her ears. She starts trying to pick the pieces back up again but they slip between her fingers. Benny reaches out and she snatches her hands back. “Don’t _touch_ me!”

“Is she-” Levertov begins, sounding helpless. 

“I don’t think so.” Benny’s voice is soft, and Beth wants to snap at him but she’s terrified that if she does she’ll burst into tears instead. She looks down at her fingers, knotted tightly together in her lap. Her right hand is flushed red, the wrist purpling. 

“I’ll get you some water,” Levertov says, pushes away from the table, and Beth feels small and stupid and ashamed.

“Beth.” Benny’s voice is barely above a whisper but she can’t look at him. His hand settles between her shoulders and she flinches, but he doesn’t move it. “Breathe,” he instructs, and she tries, dragging air raggedly into her lungs. She wants a _drink_ , wants three green pills, after which none of this will matter. Benny’s hand is still on her back, touch firm but light, and she thinks _everyone knows what you are_. It’s stupid to be so shaken over something so small, people have said far worse about her and she hasn’t cared, she shouldn’t be sitting here feeling like she could shatter into small pieces at the slightest provocation.

“Tell me the Danish Gambit,” Benny says, and Beth takes another raw breath.

“White to e4,” she manages, “Black to e5.” Benny makes an acknowledging sound and she continues: “White to d4. Black takes. White to c3.”

By the time she’s talked through the opening, has the White bishop in position and none of the Black pieces developed, her head is thudding a little less and Levertov has returned with a glass of ice water. Beth drinks it gratefully, focusing on each sip and not on the two men exchanging worried glances.

“What happened?” Benny asks at last.

Beth takes in a breath through her nose, lets it back out again, squares her shoulders. “What happened is that Levertov’s diagonals are a fucking mess, and you need to keep your hands to yourself before some gossip rag announces that we’re sleeping together.”

Benny sits back in his chair, expression still too thoughtful for Beth’s liking, but he doesn’t push. “Gossip rags are already announcing that we’re sleeping together,” he says neutrally.

“That doesn’t make you special,” Levertov replies, setting chess pieces back on the board. “She’s supposedly also dating Townes, Wexler, and both the twins.”

Beth’s chest is still too tight but she manages to smile. “What can I say, I like to keep my options open.”

“Mike’s girl says Beth needs to find herself a fake husband,” Levertov says cheerfully, glancing down at the page of notes next to the board and moving the initial pawns into place.

“I’m not having a fake husband,” Beth says impatiently, putting her emptied glass on the table and leaning forward to study the game. All she wants right now is to get herself lost in discussing strategies and moving pieces, a world that’s much better and more important than the real one, where all the rules are hers alone.

-

A grandmaster from Pittsburgh knocks out Benny early on the final day in a quick exchange of barely thirty moves; Benny sighs but concedes with grace and a rueful smile.

“At least your diagonals were strong,” Levertov tells him later, smacking his shoulder while Benny groans and drinks a carefully solitary beer. He could order more, it’s not like it matters to Beth, but he drags it out, sipping and picking at the edges of the label until Beth wants to snatch it off him and finish it herself just so it will be _gone_. It doesn’t chase any of the stiffness out of his shoulders, but he grins for everyone who comes up to commiserate, shake his hand or offer unsolicited advice. 

Beth didn’t sleep well last night, but she took time over her hair and make-up and selected a cardigan that hides a slightly bruised wrist without anyone asking questions, and after the first hour of the day passed and no one tried to accost her beyond a couple of autograph hunters, she’s relaxed again. She can remember the sharp fear of yesterday, the crawling discomfort that interfered with her breathing, but it seems a long way away now. It’s not like she doesn’t get letters like that all the time, of course it was bound to spill into her life sooner or later. It doesn’t have to mean anything, it’s just unfortunate that she reacted so badly; at least there were no cameras around.

Everyone is gathering in the main hall to watch the final; their group starts dispersing to find good places, and Beth scoops up her purse to go with Susan and Mike, not above using her notoriety to get a decent view.

“Can I borrow you a minute, Beth?” Benny calls. 

Beth looks over her shoulder but he’s still slumped at one end of the fake-velvet couch he commandeered in the hotel bar, hat and finally emptied beer bottle on the table in front of him. She tells Susan she’ll catch her up and goes to sit down at the other end of the couch, a decent distance between them, presses her knees primly together. Benny doesn’t say anything, and they watch as the majority of the patrons finish their drinks and head out. The silence between them is expectant, but Benny started this and Beth can’t think of a reason for her to finish it.

“You gonna tell me who it was?” Benny asks at last, rolling his head on the back of the couch to look at her. When Beth frowns at him, he drops his gaze to where her cardigan sleeve has slid up enough to reveal a distinctive-looking bruise. She thinks about telling Benny she had an accident in the shower or with the hotel room door, but neither of them would believe it.

“It was a misunderstanding,” she says instead. “You may have the attitude and the fucking knife but you’re not an actual cowboy, Benny.”

His mouth tightens. “If you need help-”

“I don’t,” Beth cuts him off, and he huffs out an annoyed sigh that she remembers hearing multiple times on the end of a phoneline.

This is the moment to leave: there’s still a little time before the match starts, but Beth doesn’t move.

After a couple more crawling minutes, Benny adjusts his posture so he’s actually sitting instead of sprawling, and says: “we should get married.”

Beth turns her head so fast she hears something in her neck crunch. “I’m sorry, _what_?”

Benny shrugs. “I have everything you need in a fake husband,” he tells her. “One, I won’t make you quit chess. I won’t _let_ you quit chess. Two, I’ll always be at your tournaments to support you because I’ll be there anyway.” He’s ticking them off on his fingers like this a real list, a real consideration. “Three, you won’t need to find a trainer. Four, you’ll get the Federation back on your side because we’ll make chess look sexy and romantic to whoever it is they think they want to appeal to. Five, the country’s two greatest players getting married? You can’t _buy_ that kind of publicity.”

Beth stares at him for a long time but he doesn’t blink or crack or back down. “Fuck off, Benny,” she says.

“They’ll keep writing about your personal life and not your chess playing unless you _make_ chess playing your personal life,” Benny tells her. “Once you’re married the press won’t care what you’re doing outside of tournaments or television. Go where you want, do what you want, fuck who you want, no one will write a damn thing about it.” 

“I am not marrying you,” Beth snaps. She can’t believe that this is something she has to actually say; she can’t believe that this is something Benny is actually offering.

Benny’s expression doesn’t change. “We know that we can live together,” he adds. “We managed five weeks, which I think is a record. Cleo tried to kill me with my own knife after ten days.”

The thought of that unlocks a whole train of emotions in Beth that she forces herself not to focus on now; she settles for simply saying: “ _no_.”

“Don’t think of it as marriage,” Benny tells her. “Think of it as castling.”

Beth raises an eyebrow. “Am I the king or the rook in this analogy?”

Benny’s mouth twists a little as he considers this. “I always thought of myself as a knight, frankly.”

“Yes, that’s patently obvious.” Beth has had enough of this conversation, knows that she and Benny could bat it back and forth into a stalemate for the rest of the afternoon. She brushes her hands off on her skirt, gets to her feet.

Benny grins up at her, something sparked in his eyes. “You’ll think about it,” he says.

“I won’t,” Beth says, and walks away.

She does, though.

-

For months and months and _months_ when Beth was seventeen, she thought about Benny Watts. 

It was an impossible compulsion; whenever she heard _US Open Co-Champion_ her mind snapped straight to him with a hot flush of shame. She’d be studying or sitting in class or walking to the store and suddenly she’d see him sitting across from her, dark eyes and placid expression and fucking Caro-Kann Defence that forced her to concede. She’d hear _you shouldn’t have castled_ and turn her head to find no one there, just her mind tormenting her over again. She’d be practicing new moves and all she could see was her position crumbling, nowhere left to run.

A lot of things happened that year and looking back her memories of stewing over Benny are kind of mixed up with walking away from Townes, with wine and music and losing her virginity, and in the end it took Borgov and Alma’s death to put Benny Watts from her mind altogether.

Things are different now, but sometimes Beth is uncomfortably reminded of those months, of reading every chess magazine and scanning the game lists for Benny’s name, playing out his matches and crowing every time she spotted a mistake or he drew or he lost. A feverish obsession that at the time she told herself was based in humiliation and anger and nothing else. Inevitably when Beth thinks about Benny now there are far more emotions and far more factors to consider but the way she keeps involuntarily drifting back to Washington is awkwardly familiar. No matter what she’s doing, multiple times a day, Beth blinks and there Benny is, saying _we should get married_ like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Beth could talk to Jolene about this, and Townes probably has some good advice about the wide difference you can have between public and private relationships, but she can’t bring herself to want to discuss this aloud. This was all Susan’s idea, and she could probably offer to spend an evening tutoring Mike’s fiancée in some next level openings, then ask her what she really _meant_ by suggesting that Beth find herself someone to act as her husband, but the idea of doing so makes her press her face into her hands at the sheer _awkwardness_.

It’s possible that she and Benny are friends, that that might be the simplest term to sieve out of the wide range of options and slap on a label. There was a time when Beth wanted nothing more than to break his nose, to tear him apart on the board with all the fierce vigour of a teenage girl suffering her first heartbreak, angrily kicking magazines with his face on the cover underneath her bed where she could hide from his knowing eyes. And there was a time when she could see and feel his magnetism, drawn inevitably to him and half-hating herself for it. And then there were the five weeks they spent in his apartment, playing chess like Beth had never played it until her veins were full of pawns and bishops, her mind like lightning and flames _all the time_ , and she lived for the moments when she could see the admiration on his face and he wasn’t trying to hide it. That time is matched up with a similar but also different version of Benny, who kissed with a ruthlessness that she recognised from the board, who learned her body and taught it back to her with the same dedication that he taught her Borgov’s favourite opening stratagems. It wasn’t romantic, and he was frustratingly focused on her upcoming tournament, but it sure as hell was _something_.

Beth fucked all of that up by fleeing from it along with everything else about her life that year, and she’s still not sure which parts were deliberate and which ones were not.

Some mornings she wakes up furious, suddenly indignant that Benny thinks he could offer her _anything_ when her life is coming together so well and she’s no longer the lost little girl who crossed his paths at tournaments. Other times she’s making dinner and remembers the way her heart felt too big for her chest when she picked up the phone in Moscow and heard his voice, tinny from the distance and more beautiful than anything she’d ever heard in her life. She drags her trash to the kerb and exchanges awkward half-smiles with the neighbours who still don’t approve of her and thinks, well, who the fuck _proposes_ and then doesn’t even call?

Finally, Beth loses her temper and dials New York, ready to tell Benny that he’s an asshole, that he’s arrogant and smug and her talents outstripped his years ago. But the phone rings and rings and rings and no one picks up and she slams the handset back into the cradle, thwarted. She leans her back against the wall and closes her eyes and there’s another memory, sharp enough to make her breath hitch: Benny grinning up from between her thighs, golden hair caught in Beth’s fingers as he made her twitch and squirm, the bite mark he left on her hip that she could feel all the next day as she read pamphlets and played the same moves three times over. 

They’re older now, though, and all that is definitely behind them, blazed out of their systems.

The next two times Beth tries calling Benny she gets no answer. It’s possible he’s avoiding her, that he realised it was a stupid mistake too, but he can’t _know_ that it’s her calling. Annoyed, she sets her alarm clock and calls him at three in the morning, determined to get him out to bed just to _talk_ to her, but she sits there listening to the ring miles away and he doesn’t pick up. Beth considers checking with Wexler or Levertov, see if one of them can put her in touch with Benny, but if something was _really_ wrong she’s sure the news would have made its way to her one way or another, and she’s not desperate. Increasingly annoyed and periodically a little distracted, but there’s no actual _need_ for them to speak to each other.

Sorting her mail into stacks on the living room carpet based on the tone of the first line of each letter, Beth is not thinking about her agent pointedly suggesting that there are several brands who would love to sponsor her and use her for advertising campaigns, but that said brands would feel more comfortable if she were settled down, married, a _safe bet_ as he calls it. Beth is angry about this in the way that she’s been angry since the first time she read a newspaper article about herself and all it wanted to talk about was her gender and not her Sicilian Defence, but she’s tired as well. Tired of the seemingly endless ways that her life is made difficult just because she didn’t have a high school sweetheart to marry and procreate with the moment she graduated, just because she dared to want _more_.

When she next calls up Benny, not even sure what she’s going to say, the number has been disconnected.

Beth recalls _Cleo tried to kill me with my own knife after ten days_ , and conjures herself a grim smile. “I bet she did,” she tells her empty kitchen.

Benny finally calls her nearly two weeks later, voice brisk and bright like he’s not been successfully driving Beth insane by doing nothing at all a very long distance away. “Are you ready to admit that I’m right yet?”

“I see you got your phone reconnected,” Beth replies, cool, lights herself a cigarette to remind herself not to lose her temper and by extension the upper hand.

“Some very minor bill misunderstandings,” Benny says, like Beth didn’t live with him long enough to watch him stack up the unopened official envelopes with the angry red stamps on them. “That’s not what I rang to talk about, and I bet it’s not what you were calling me about.”

“Betting’s your whole problem, isn’t it, Benny?” Beth remarks, and in that moment hears the click of a perfect check. “That’s what this is all about.”

“Don’t be a brat, Beth,” Benny says, a warning note in his tone.

“You need my money,” Beth tells him, hoping she sounds calm, steady. “You never could stay on the right side of broke. You came up with a whole list of misdirection but you’re not offering to do me a _favour_ , you need to marry me before your gambling debts come back to bite you.”

“I don’t want your fucking money,” Benny spits. Beth’s never heard his voice so sharp, so coldly furious, not even when he was telling her never to contact him again. “Get one of your showbiz lawyers to draw you up something binding, you can keep all of it.”

“They cut off your telephone because you couldn’t pay for it,” Beth tells him tightly, unsure if she’s incredulous or stung. 

“So you’d take care of the finances and I’d take care of the liquor cabinet.” Benny’s voice is still angry, a fist to the sternum that has Beth opening her mouth defensively before she realises that she has nothing to say. There’s a long minute of silence, just crackling and breathing on the telephone line, and Beth finally understands just what Benny is offering and why.

“Fine,” she says at last.


	2. you shouldn't open doors you don't plan to walk through

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Regular thanks to [trobairitz22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trobairitz22/profile) and [finkpishnets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/finkpishnets/profile) for betaing and plotting and encouragement, and additional thanks to [HumiliatedRook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HumiliatedRook/profile) for checking my chess and asking a lot of helpful questions! Typos, errors and commas you don't think should be there are all my own stubborn fault.]

Beth was never one of those little girls who daydreamed of handsome princes or sparkling white wedding gowns. 

There was her hazily enclosed life with her mother and then the austereness of Methuen, and then there was chess. Playing through games in her mind was always preferable to imagining ridiculous romantic scenarios; even once adolescence kicked in and she began noticing boys, she didn’t spend hours building castles in the air involving them. Her experiences with men have proven as awkward and complicated as she deep-down suspected they always would be, and marriage was never an endgame she was desperately striving for.

This is all just as well, because laying down plans to marry Benny Watts is more an exercise in frustration than anything else.

“ _Shit_ , bitch, no,” Jolene says, when Beth tells her the decision she’s made. 

“You said I should get a fake husband!” Beth protests.

“I meant that you should find yourself a boring white boy who can dress okay and knows how to keep his mouth shut that you could drag around behind you for a few years,” Jolene tells her. “There’s a bunch in the mailroom at work, you can take your pick.”

“Do any of them play chess?” Beth asks.

“People can learn chess,” Jolene says. “You want a mannequin you can boss around and who’ll stand back when the reporters arrive.”

Beth knows what Benny is like around reporters: she’s seen it often enough. And Jolene isn’t saying anything that Beth hasn’t considered for herself since Benny said _fine_ back and they found themselves engaged. It would be easy – sensible, even – to call Benny and say she’s thought about it again and this is the most terrible idea anyone has ever had, they can’t possibly go through with it. Instead, she watches Jolene flipping critically through an old issue of _Sports Illustrated_ , tutting to herself alternately at the photographs of Benny and at quotations from his interview.

“There is no way that this boy is doing anything in bed that’s worth all this,” she says, holding up a full-page photo of Benny scowling up at the camera, a black king and a white queen tucked between his fingers. “Let me just buy you one of those personal massagers and stick your number by the office coffee pot.”

“We’re not… it’s not that kind of marriage,” Beth says swiftly, because it’s not like they’ve discussed it but she’s pretty sure that sex is back off the table they briefly put it on. There’s no way that that could end anywhere good.

“ _Christ_.” Jolene makes a face and throws the magazine dismissively to the carpet. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t lock you up until this madness passes.”

Beth twists her mouth and wishes for wine, but Jolene is maybe the only person she can confess this to, and maybe if she says it now she’ll never have to say it again. “I trust him,” she admits.

Jolene just stares at her incredulously.

“He’s an asshole,” Beth says, “but so am I. He’s frustrating and arrogant and I’ll probably want him dead after a few months, but I know the way he thinks because I think that way too.”

“Fine,” Jolene sighs, walks over to sit beside Beth on the couch and squeeze her knee. “But I’m making sure you’ve got an airtight prenup.”

“I want one,” Beth assures her. 

“I guess in a few years you can be a glamorous divorcee,” Jolene muses. “You can get a cigarette holder and some of those enormous rich bitch hats.”

“That is the plan,” Beth agrees solemnly, and Jolene laughs, pulls her into a hug.

-

“We need a backstory,” Benny says.

It is Thursday evening, rain sheeting down the windowpanes, and Beth is trying to give herself a manicure with the telephone tucked under her ear. She’s already gotten a tiny drop of polish on the carpet, but she thinks it’s small enough to get away with.

“I thought the whole point of already knowing each other was that we didn’t need a backstory,” Beth says, frustrated. They’ve been on the phone for forty-five minutes already, discussing an apparently endless list of wedding details, and Beth is starting to get cold and grouchy. “We met over a chess set, our rivalry spilled over into mutual respect, then love. It’s very romantic.”

“You might want to work on your delivery of that,” Benny responds, dry. “You could sound a bit less like I’m holding a gun to your head. Just a suggestion.”

“I’ll practice,” Beth snips back. “Anyway, there’s our backstory, it’s what everyone expects.”

“And just when did our mutual respect turn to love?” Benny presses.

Beth looks up to the shadowed ceiling, leaning back against the wall. “Something about you mentoring me?”

There’s the slightest of hesitations before Benny responds. “Too long ago,” he says, crisp, “they’ll all think we’ve been living in sin.”

“I already burned my bridges with the Jesus people,” Beth points out, “and we’re not having a church wedding, I’m pretty sure we don’t have to pretend blushing virginity.”

“I don’t have to pretend anything,” Benny says baldly, “but it’s your reputation we’re scrambling to preserve here.”

Beth huffs, because he’s not wrong. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll pick a date and let you know.”

“Great.” There’s a brief pause, and then Benny says: “pet names.”

“No.”

“We’re trying to sell a fake relationship here,” he reminds her.

“I’m not a pet names person,” Beth tells him.

“Alright, but it’s not me you’re trying to convince,” Benny says. “Where are we going to live?”

“Do you have a fucking _list_?” Beth bursts out.

“Yes,” Benny says. “And before you say anything I’m not moving to the middle of fucking nowhere.”

Beth tells herself to take a deep breath and count to five, and does so before she says: “well, I’m not living in a goddamn basement that was last cleaned in the late fifties.”

There’s a silence, and she pictures Benny fidgeting with his signet ring. “…I can’t believe I’m sitting here saying this to you all over again, but do you want to come to New York?”

Beth’s not exactly surprised to find that she’s already considered this on some subconscious level, feels confident saying: “…okay.”

“Oh.” Benny clears his throat. “Okay, well, that was easier than I expected.”

“I’m not living in your shitty basement,” Beth repeats, firm, because if she thinks about anything else she’ll remember a dozen other phone calls, Benny demanding her presence, something in Beth unravelling and refusing to go.

“I can afford the rent for it,” Benny counters.

“Well, I can afford the rent for somewhere else,” Beth tells him. “Somewhere above street level with real flooring and an actual couch and a shower that isn’t in the living room. Write that on your list.”

There’s enough of a pause that Beth thinks he might actually be writing it down, and she pictures him sat at his table in a pool of dim lamplight, one of the notebooks he usually uses for chess notations now filled with the headache of marital bureaucracy. The thought makes her smile a little, unable to pinpoint exactly why.

-

This time of year Chicago is brutally cold. 

The airport is a flurry of activity, everyone bundled in thick coats and scarves, and Beth is glad she second-guessed herself and packed that extra sweater. She gets a few second glances, a couple of brief smiles that might be recognition or flirtation, but she’s largely anonymous among all these people and it’s relaxing. This trip isn’t a secret, not exactly, but Beth can’t remember the last time she travelled and it wasn’t for her chess career. No one has sent a car, her name isn’t already printed on competition lists or call sheets, there’s no weight of expectation. 

Despite the knot of dread in her stomach that led her to drink three bottles of coke on the short flight, Beth feels surprisingly light.

It’s possible this could all have been achieved in one day but Beth has a hotel room anyway, a flight tomorrow morning just in case. It’s a small room, just the basics: she isn’t planning on being here very long. She shrugs on the extra sweater, checks her lipstick and her hair, and goes to ask the front desk to call her a cab to the county clerk’s office.

There’s still snow on the streets. Beth sits still in the backseat, ordering herself not to fidget, answering the driver’s easy questions with the first lie that comes to mind each time. She’s constructed an elaborate false narrative by the time they arrive, telling the driver to keep the change and taking a deep breath of freezing air as she gets out. It’s not cold like Moscow was cold, but she’s glad her scarf is big enough to snuggle her face into as she walks down the gritty sidewalk.

Benny is easy to spot from a distance, his coat rendering him a slim dark streak as he paces by a streetlight. He breathes out plumes of cigarette smoke, still wearing his ridiculous hat even in this weather. Beth suppresses a smile, tells herself she could still walk away, and instead digs her hands into her coat pockets and goes to meet him.

“Beth.” Benny nods, tosses his cigarette butt into the road.

“Benny.” Beth considers a hug, a handshake, a European cheek kiss. Instead, she stands awkwardly for a moment. “You look underdressed.”

He rolls his eyes at her, reaches out to put a hand in the small of Beth’s back as they walk inside. They have an appointment, Benny called and made it once they’d finished sorting through their options, but certain things have to be done in person and this is one of them. They sit on stiffly uncomfortable chairs in a waiting room, not even trying to make conversation. Benny taps an impatient foot on the cracked linoleum floor, and Beth practices her favourite openings on the greying ceiling tiles. A couple of other people join them, one of them immersed in a falling-apart book, the other staring at information posters tacked to the walls. Benny abruptly reaches over and takes Beth’s hand; she doesn’t know if it’s for show or reassurance but she doesn’t pull away. Benny’s fingers are cold, his ring an icy metal lump against her skin. 

The actual appointment is more straightforward than Beth was expecting: there are no trick questions, she and Benny hand over identifying documents and fill out forms, swear an oath that there’s no reason they can’t be married, and are told where to go for their blood tests. Obviously, neither of them live in Illinois, which pushes up the cost and the waiting time, but their calculations should be correct.

“You’ll need to pick up the license a week before the ceremony,” the clerk tells them.

“Not a problem, we’ll be here for the Greater Chicago Chess Open,” Benny replies.

The clerk briefly glances over them, says: “do you play?”

There’s amusement in the look Benny throws at her; Beth swallows a smile and says: “we dabble.”

Back on the cold street, Benny gives Beth a thoughtful look. “Lunch?”

It would have been easiest to go to Vegas, of course; there’s a reason why so many people get married there. It was Beth’s first idea. Benny shot it down, pointed out that Beth wanted a marriage that didn’t look spur-of-the-moment, that was respectable and legitimate from all possible angles. So they sat up one night with their respective issues of _Chess Life_ and looked at the important dates for the year. The point of all this is the marriage, not a long engagement or an enormous flashy wedding. They’ll get married at the end of the Chicago tournament: the press will be there anyway and so will most of the people either of them would want to attend. It keeps things professional, another way for Beth to keep her personal life and her chess career paired in people’s minds. 

“And then the honeymoon.” They’re sat in the corner of a small restaurant, Benny tipping his chair back because he never did learn to sit properly.

“We’re not having a honeymoon,” Beth says. Real couples have honeymoons, but there’s no reason for them to. “What’s the point?”

“People have honeymoons,” Benny says. “We’re having two weeks in Paris.”

Something clenches in Beth’s stomach, dropping hollow. Despite various hopes and plans she’s only ever been to Paris once, and now even the word takes her back to that aching, painful humiliation, sweating pastis out of her pores while Borgov quietly dismantled her with nothing on his face but disappointment. She’s played back those few days over and over in her head: the way the city felt when she first arrived, tugging at her to drop everything and explore; the night with Cleo that is still more blanks than memories; the shame she felt as the taxi took her to the airport, everything she had loved before now ashy and bitter and judgemental. Beth cannot go back there. Paris has seen her stripped back to the bone, knows all the dark little parts inside of her that Beth tries very hard to hide. It has seen her fail and fail and _fail_ , and Beth will not give it more of herself.

“No,” she manages through numbing lips.

Benny tilts his head as he considers her for a moment. Beth doesn’t know what expression she’s wearing, hopes it’s not as nakedly awful as she feels. 

“You need to go back,” Benny says, and while his tone is uncompromising, his voice is softer now. “You need to go to Paris and see that it’s noisy and dirty and full of assholes and traffic, just like every other city in the world, and then it won’t haunt you anymore. It’s just a city. That’s all.”

“Then we can go to a different city,” Beth counters.

“I like Paris,” Benny shrugs. “They have decent tournaments, and it’s a good base to open up your European chess career from. Jump on a train, you can go to Berlin. Jump on a boat, you can go to London. But if you don’t go back, all you or anyone else will ever remember is a hungover resignation after a shitty game that fell apart two moves in.”

Beth wants to snap something cruel back at him but her throat is oddly full and she’s not sure what would come out. She swallows, twice.

“Yeah, yeah,” Benny says, eyes intently on her expression, “I’m a dick, but you’re not a coward. Two weeks, Paris. Talk to someone, customise the trip with whatever you want. But it’s not negotiable.”

“Are you going to be this shitty when we’re married?” Beth grumbles. Her chest is still too tight, and all she can think about is cramming her dress, her shoes, her underwear into the garbage, everything that was with her during that godawful game, never wanting any of it to touch her ever again. 

“I’m gonna be worse,” Benny replies, unrepentant, and holds up his water glass until Beth sighs and clinks hers against it.

It’s cold enough to justify catching a cab but Beth lets Benny walk her back to her hotel. Their faces both end up flushed from the wind but by the third block Beth doesn’t mind so much; it gives her time for the remnants of nausea from thinking about Paris to fade away, to push all of those feelings back into the box she’s been keeping them in. As she relaxes she sees some of the tension in Benny’s shoulders fade, his eyes glittering in the late winter afternoon. He’s got his cocksure grin back, and it’s more reassuring than any number of words could be.

They stand outside the hotel; it’s gotten dark, and there’s golden light spilling out of the lobby onto the street. Benny’s face is shadowy under his stupid hat, cheeks windburned and lips a little chapped, and they applied for a goddamn fucking marriage license today. It’s surreal, and part of what is surreal is that it doesn’t feel _more_ weird.

“So,” Beth says awkwardly, “this has got… very real.”

“You’re gonna tell your agent and your lawyer?” Benny asks. “Maybe I won’t answer the phone for a few days, your sister threatening to castrate me was enough.”

Beth didn’t know that Jolene had done that, but it figures.

“I probably should tell them,” she agrees awkwardly. “Jolene’s insisting I get you to sign a lot of paperwork.” A thought occurs to her. “Do you need to-”

“I have nothing that you need,” Benny cuts her off. “If and when we get divorced, I’ve got nothing worth taking.”

It’s basically true, and no part of arranging this marriage so far has been anything other than pragmatic, but it still strikes an uncomfortable chord in Beth and she looks away. “Right. Of course.”

Benny sighs, his breath bright white in the chilly air. “Beth. If you don’t want-”

“I do.” Beth looks back at him, hears what she’s just said and chokes a laugh. “I do, Benny.”

He’s smiling too, something a little sharp and wry, and reaches to tidy a lock of Beth’s hair where the wind’s blown it across her face. Beth thinks, abruptly, of that last car journey to the airport, Beth’s flight for Paris leaving soon, the press of Benny’s mouth against hers. It’s been so long that she almost can’t remember what his kiss feels like; she wonders whether it’s changed. Whether she has changed. Her hotel room is upstairs, warm and quiet, and only one person in the world knows where she is right now. They could be anybody.

“I should go,” Benny says, hand dropping and stepping back. “It’s a long way back to New York.”

“Sure,” Beth says, hoping she doesn’t sound breathless. “Drive safe, don’t make me have to ask Wexler to be my next fake fiancé.”

“At least ask Levertov,” Benny replies, dips his head and walks away, hands crammed into his pockets. He doesn’t look back before he turns the corner at the end of the street, but Beth watches him all the way anyway, bottom lip caught between her teeth.

-

Beth’s lawyer wants to get started on the prenuptial paperwork immediately, and Beth’s agent just wants assuring that she’s definitely not pregnant. After that it’s more about organising how the wedding will be announced, how the publicity will be handled; Beth insists that it’s not too overblown, she’s never wanted a hysterical bridal frenzy. She remembers to send in her acceptance to participate in the Greater Chicago Chess Open, spends an afternoon with a travel agent organising the Parisian honeymoon. The more she organises the details, the less she has to think about what she’s really doing.

Telling Townes ends up being the most difficult part. Beth can’t pretend that she doesn’t know why; some part of her has been longing for him since she was fifteen years old, still looks at his handsome face and feels something twinge in her. For the most part those feelings are platonic now and Beth has made her peace with it. Any remnants of something else, well. Beth’s crushed down enough desires for impossibilities over the years.

He studies Beth’s face for a long time after she tells him that she and Benny are getting married in the spring, and she resists the urge to babble excuses, just sits quiet and lets him look at her. They’ve always been drawn to each other, ever since that first competition, but Beth is drawn in one way and Townes is drawn in another way and the two ways are similar but not similar enough. They nearly overlapped, once, for a minute or two in a hotel room miles and miles away, but they didn’t. Beth carried the pain of that for years, but enough time has passed that she can be glad about it.

“If you wanted a husband-” Townes begins at last.

“No,” Beth cuts him off. “No, I would never ask you to do that.”

“We’d look magnificent in all the photographs,” Townes remarks. His smile is a little crooked. 

“That’s true,” Beth agrees mildly. “But. You deserve more than an awkward sham marriage to a little girl who beat the pants off you back in Sixty-Three.”

Townes tips his head in acknowledgement. “So you’re having a sham marriage to the cowboy who dismantled you in Sixty-Six instead.”

“Well, that was the last time I ever let him do that,” Beth says. “He hasn’t got a taste for it or anything.”

“I guess there have been worse starts to a marriage,” Townes muses. He pins Beth with a look, and she lets him. “Are you sure that this is what you have to do?”

Beth would scoff at him, remind him that he’s a man and he doesn’t know what any of this is like, but she also knows that Townes quietly carries more secrets than she ever will, that he can never have the things that Beth can, that his romantic life will always be complicated and more difficult than it needs to be through no fault of his own. He probably knows more about the choice that Beth is making than Beth herself does.

“I can always get a divorce,” she tells him, and watches him laugh.

“And Watts?” Townes asks. “He’s sure about this too?”

Beth frowns. “He likes chess and money and the legend of Benny Watts,” she says. “This feeds into all three of those things.”

“True,” Townes agrees, though he still looks faintly troubled.

“I’d like you to come,” Beth says. “You can have an exclusive for the paper, if you like.”

“You don’t have to bribe me,” Townes tells her. 

“I know.” Beth shrugs. “But this may as well benefit as many people as possible.”

Townes reaches across to take Beth’s hand between both of his, squeezes it. His smile is a little sad, but Beth suspects that hers is too, and it’s okay.

-

The phone rings at four in the morning, and Beth rolls over in bed and groans and puts the pillow over her head but it just keeps going. She staggers to answer it, narrowly avoids falling down the stairs, and snatches it up.

“Hello?” she demands.

“Beth.” Benny sounds irritatingly bright for this time of the morning. 

“Fucking _what_?” Beth demands. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“You’re the one who answered the phone,” Benny replies, like this is a reasonable response. 

“Yeah,” Beth says, “I was hoping it was someone ringing with bad news about you and telling me I’d become a tragic widow.”

“You have to get married before you can be a widow,” Benny responds, still cheerful, and Beth sighs and sits down on the carpet.

“Are you drunk?” she asks.

“…a bit,” Benny admits. “But I had an important thought and it couldn’t wait.”

“Is it that I should play the Sicilian?” Beth asks, acidic, but Benny either doesn’t get what she’s talking about or doesn’t hear.

“We’re about to go public,” he continues.

“Yes,” Beth says, “there is no point to this marriage if we don’t. Also, I think you start fading away if you go more than three days without speaking to a reporter.”

“It’s you speaking to reporters that I’m worried about,” Benny replies, not rising to her bait.

“What do you mean?” Beth asks.

Benny huffs, and says: “okay, look, don’t hang up. But did Harry Beltik ever make you come?”

Beth sucks a breath in through her teeth, and strongly considers slamming the phone down, to hell with what Benny just said. The anger, the embarrassment, the shame are quick and jumbled and edge her close to nausea.

“You piece of shit,” she hisses into the phone, to see if it will help vent any of the feelings. It doesn’t.

“I have a point to this,” Benny says. He doesn’t _sound_ very drunk, not the blurred voice or mangled words that Beth associates with being blitzed, but the knowledge that he _is_ makes her teeth grit, knuckles white around the handset. “So. Beth. Did Harry Beltik ever make you come?”

Beth wants to hang up the phone. She _should_ hang up the phone, Benny can call back at a decent hour, hungover and apologetic, and then he’ll be the one on the back foot.

“No,” she lets out between her teeth, barely audible. “No, he did not.”

“No,” Benny agrees. “And he knows that he didn’t, and I know that he didn’t, and I’m pretty sure your twins know that he didn’t, and anyone else who’s really looked at your face when you hear his name knows that he didn’t.”

“Harry Beltik is a much better person than you are,” Beth hisses, her skin feeling itchy, too tight.

“Sure,” Benny agrees, “he’s a nice guy and what you did to him was a damn shame, but that’s not the point I’m making here.”

“Then make it before I call this fucking farce off,” Beth snaps. She feels on the edge of tears, not wanting to admit exactly why.

“Got to do part two of the question,” Benny replies, and there’s the briefest of pauses before he says: “I made you come, though, didn’t I?”

“If you’re calling about plans for our wedding night, they involve you being on the other side of a locked door,” Beth tells him tightly.

“I agree,” Benny says mildly. “For once, this isn’t actually about my ego.”

“That’s a first,” Beth snips, but maybe the sooner she navigates the endless traps in this conversation she can go back to bed and pretend that none of this happened. “Yes. On occasion, you were not terrible in bed.”

Benny laughs, raw, and Beth shuts her eyes against a dozen vulnerabilities and a flash of something in her stomach. “That’ll do,” he says. He huffs a breath, there’s rustling on the line and Beth pictures him raking his hand back through his stupid hair. “I’m not telling you to look at me like you’ve seen one too many Disney movies, no one will believe that, but you also need not to look at me like I’ve played a middle game you can collapse in four moves.” 

Beth processes what he’s just said and tries to work out if she’s stung or not. “I don’t look at you like that.”

“You look at everyone like that,” Benny replies. “It’s fine, I even kind of like it, but no one’s going to believe you’re not dragging yourself to the altar if you look like that every time we’re together.”

“This was not worth waking me up at four for,” Beth tells him, scowling, curling her knees up to her chest.

“You wouldn’t talk to me about this with the lights on,” Benny says, like that’s a valid reason for this shitshow of a conversation. “You can’t look at me like you’re in love but if you can look at me like I’m helping you find God three times a night we might just get away with it.”

Beth considers saying _three times a night seems excessive_ or possibly just _you fucking wish_ , but instead says: “and how will you be looking at me, Benny?”

“I’ve seen enough of your admirers,” Benny replies, dry, “I’ll manage something.”

For a minute, neither of them says anything. Beth sits in the dark and keeps her eyes shut and breathes, listening to Benny breathing in New York.

“I see your point,” she allows quietly, hoping she sounds dignified and not verging on distraught, “but I have a couple of points to make.”

“Go ahead.”

“You will not call me when you’re drunk again,” Beth tells him. “And the next time you bring up Harry around me, I will punch you in the face, and you will deserve it. Is that clear?”

“Clear,” Benny agrees.

“Now, stop being an asshole and go to bed,” she orders. “And maybe don’t call me for a few days.”

Benny hangs up without saying goodbye; Beth puts the phone down and sits still in the dark for a minute before she goes back upstairs.

-

Levertov and Wexler are the ones who find the apartment.

“Watts has no idea what makes a valid home,” Wexler explains on the phone, “he’s been living in that basement for four years and hasn’t worked out why everyone complains when they visit.”

“Benny just needs somewhere to sleep and play chess,” Levertov adds; Beth pictures the two of them passing the telephone between them. “We thought you at least deserved a real bathroom.”

“That was on my list of criteria,” Beth agrees.

“He was going to pick somewhere terrible, so we took over,” Levertov explains.

“And we’ve found it!” Wexler has clearly grabbed the handset back, excitement in his voice. “Fourth floor, two bedrooms, a bathtub, enough space in the living room for at least seven grandmasters. The kitchen’s shit but it’s New York, they all are.”

Beth blinks, absorbing all this. “I don’t cook anyway.”

“Neither does Benny,” Levertov says. “We’re considering betting the twins that you both die of scurvy within the first year.”

Beth laughs. “What’s the rent, anyway?”

They tell her; it seems ridiculously high and also less than Beth was expecting. She keeps a notepad by the telephone these days, the edges thick with doodles, the pages full of notes like when she’s supposed to call back _Chess Life_ and the address of their hotel in Paris and a shoe designer she wanted to check out. She sort of misses when she just used to write down potential manoeuvres. She jots down the price and calculates the quarterly and yearly cost while Levertov carries on telling her about the apartment, that it’s fully furnished and ready for occupancy by the time they get back from their honeymoon. 

“We made Benny go and look at it and he didn’t hate it, but he didn’t hate any of the six places he looked at before we took over and one of them didn’t have any windows,” Wexler says. “He says he’ll go to the estate agent, but you’ll probably have to provide proof you can pay for it, you know what Benny’s like, he’ll probably just try and wave a copy of _Deutsche Schachzeitung_ with him on the cover and claim that’s proof of equity or something.”

Beth writes down all the relevant details, the numbers she’ll have to call and the dates things need to be organised by, and wonders why it is that the more concrete things become, the less and less real this all feels.

-

The cab driver gives Beth a dubious look when he pulls up, but she simply smiles and waits for him to turn at the corner of the street before descending the metal stairs. They’re as dimly-lit and weirdly slippery as they ever were but Beth has the knack, knows how fast you can walk and what angle to cock your hips at so you don’t risk breaking an ankle. Someone in one of the upper apartments is playing Led Zeppelin way too loud, the sound spilling out into the night, and there’s a loud argument in a language Beth doesn’t speak happening in one of the buildings two doors down. The narrow walkway is still packed with garbage sacks, still smells like weed and tobacco, and Beth smiles wryly to herself instead of recoiling in disgust.

Beth knocks on the front door and, while she waits, reflects that the studio were perfectly happy to pay for a hotel room. She’d be above street level, probably with a decent view over the Manhattan skyline, in a space lightly perfumed with something floral. She could have a hot shower with decent water pressure, and one phone call would have coffee and sandwiches brought to her room and she could eat them in her double bed, sprawled against perfectly starched pillows. Instead, she stands in the cold concrete stairwell and squints at the paint peeling off the door in the flickering light of a bulb that needs replacing.

Benny looks harassed when he pulls the door open, but scrapes something like a smile together when he sees her. “You’re early.”

Beth shrugs. “Traffic was good.”

Benny steps back to let her in; his apartment isn’t a whole lot warmer than the February air outside and she reconsiders immediately taking off her coat.

“Sorry,” he says, “I’m caught up in this stupid phone call, do you mind if…?”

“Go ahead,” Beth says, pushing the door closed.

Benny grimaces at her but darts back across the room to where he’s left the handset on the table, snatching it back up again. “Regresé. ¿En qué estábamos?”

Beth’s grasp of Spanish never did develop a lot past _por favor_ and _cerveza_ , and she hasn’t much wanted to go to any of the South American tournaments since losing Alma, although she knows she’ll have to one day. She doesn’t mind that Benny’s distracted; it’s actually easier to get her bearings without his scrutiny. To a backdrop of his cracked and angry-sounding Spanish, she puts down her case and looks around.

The truly disconcerting thing is that almost nothing has changed since the last time she was here, two years and change ago. None of the furniture has moved, the walls are still exposed brick and peeling fake wood wallpaper, the floor still bare concrete in need of sweeping. Some of the book piles are taller and she thinks there are a couple more boxes stacked among his chess sets, a handful more records, but fundamentally it’s all still the same. Beth doesn’t need to go into the bathroom to know that the broken mirror hasn’t been replaced and the tap is dripping. Benny’s home has always been a place only to sleep and eat and play chess, and everything he needs is right here.

Above Benny’s crowded desk is a wall of newspaper clippings; Beth had Alma and Mr Shaibel keeping track of her, but she’s never felt the need to do it for herself and Benny’s casual vanity always makes her roll her eyes. This, at least, has been updated in the last couple of years: Beth runs her eye over the new cuttings, gaze catching on a photo from Cincinnati, she and Benny shoulder to shoulder in front of their finished game and glaring at one another in a way that could mean any number of things. 

“No,” Benny snaps somewhere behind her, “necesito que arregles todo, pelotudo.”

Beth tears her gaze away from the picture, from an expression she’s not sure she’s ever seen on her face before, and looks at the scattering of pamphlets and notes on Benny’s desk. They’re mostly chess related, a jotting of pawn successions underlined twice, but there’s also a notebook with a list in Benny’s cramped handwriting: _license, blood test, venue, announcement???, cohabitation. Backstory. Prenup._ The word _ring_ is circled, underlined three times, the third time hard enough for the pen to bite through the paper.

“Morite, che,” Benny snaps and slams the phone down.

“That sounded friendly,” Beth offers into the sudden silence, leaning back against Benny’s desk and folding her arms over her chest.

Benny makes a rueful face at her. “That was one of the organisers of the Argentinian tournament.”

“Oh,” Beth says. “Are they going to… rescind your invitation?”

“Maybe.” Benny runs a hand through his already mussed hair. “Still, you should always know how to personally insult someone in their own language, that’s the first rule of international chess competitions.”

“And I assured my agent you weren’t a loose cannon and you could be trusted not to say anything stupid tomorrow,” Beth says, laughing.

“I don’t know why you would promise that,” Benny says dryly. “You’re marrying me because I’m not boring.”

“I’m marrying you because if I don’t I’ll lose half my sponsorship because men in authority interpret not being married as being an unstable slut,” Beth reminds him, the same way she reminds herself every time she looks at the upcoming months and thinks _what the fuck am I doing?_

“That too,” Benny agrees.

He rises fluidly from his chair and walks over to her; Beth awkwardly straightens up and isn’t ready for Benny pulling her into an embrace but lets him do it. He smells like cigarettes and coffee and his disproportionately expensive cologne, his skinny frame warm and more reassuring than it should be, all things considered. They shouldn’t do this here, not in this apartment where time doesn’t pass and where they blurred every line that was ever between them. It would be easy, too easy, for Beth to tilt her head, to find Benny’s mouth and draw it to hers. She still knows by heart the shift of muscles under the skin of his back, the places where his bedframe creaks, the familiarity in the way his hands cup her hips like that’s what they were made for. Her heart pounds in her ears.

“About what I said,” Benny mumbles into her hair.

Beth could pretend not to know, could ask, but things have been tight between them since that drunken phone call. They’ve discussed a few more details, even arranged that Beth would stay with him when she came to New York for their _Late Show_ appearance, but it was all done in a crisply impersonal way that felt more like they were secretaries swapping itineraries than friends who were about to tie the knot.

Benny pulls back a little and Beth lets him go; his hands come to rest on her shoulders and he’s staring at her intently, like he’s looking for something. Beth doesn’t know what he’s seeing, hoping she isn’t as flushed as she feels. Benny’s mouth twists a little and her gaze is drawn to it, to lazy greedy kisses that used to be hers for the taking.

“I need to teach you how to throw a punch,” Benny says at last. “I’ll bet no one showed you and you’ll end up breaking your hand and where will your international chess recognition be then, huh?”

He draws away, and Beth thinks _pull him back_ with a sharp dark clarity that makes her stomach drop. She curls her fingers into her palms until the urge passes.

“I only need one hand to play chess,” she replies, walking over to take a seat at his table. There’s a half-played game laid out; Black is losing, but she leans over and nudges the remaining Black knight to an open file, just in case.

“We’ll err on the side of caution,” Benny says over his shoulder. “Coffee?”

“Sure.”

It’s late and they have a busy day where they have to be presentable in public tomorrow, but Beth doesn’t mind sitting in the lamplight with her legs tucked beneath her, sipping her coffee and watching Benny manipulate the chess board, brow furrowed in thought. It reminds her of being a different girl, of how it felt to be that version of Beth who was so sure she was invincible or damn close to it, who could spend five weeks without drinking and barely mind, who could flirt with Benny Watts and not feel some kind of sting of regret or guilt beneath it all. Beth’s won so many new things, has learned a lot and grown more, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t miss that girl from time to time.

Benny looks at her when the board reaches a stalemate, and she wonders if he misses that girl too.

“Do you still have that air mattress?” Beth asks, before she can say something stupid.

“Of course,” Benny shrugs. “Is that what you want to do?”

“Well, I’m not sleeping in your bathtub,” Beth points out. The shower curtain needed replacing two years ago; she’s not really looking forward to washing tomorrow.

“I have a bed,” Benny says, his tone of voice careful. 

Beth thinks a half-dozen things, but says: “it’s not much more comfortable than the inflatable. And you steal the covers.”

“Maybe I was offering to take the airbed like a gentleman,” Benny counters.

“I have no idea why you play so much poker when you’re such a bad liar,” Beth replies, incredulous. “No wonder you never have any money.”

“I can lie when it counts,” Benny replies. “You sure you’re okay with the air bed?”

“It’s an old friend,” Beth tells him. “I’m gonna get nostalgic, one last time. Because it won’t be coming to the new apartment.”

Benny raises his eyebrows. “Is that so?”

“You can bring your chess stuff,” Beth says firmly, “and absolutely nothing else.”

“Fine.” Benny shrugs, gives her a sly smile. “Most of it was here when I moved in.”

“Of course it was,” Beth says, but she’s smiling back anyway.

-

“I don’t think it’s really possible to know someone until you’ve played a game of chess with them,” Beth tells Johnny Carson. “I know it sounds like a cliché, but really, you can learn a lot about how they think, what they’re like under pressure, whether they’re a poor winner or a sore loser.”

“I, of course, am both,” Benny interjects, and the audience laughs.

“I’ve sat down with people who were great players but had no manners whatsoever,” Beth continues. “And I know I went to Moscow to beat the Soviets, and I did, but they were some of the kindest men I’ve ever competed with; they had warmth and grace even in defeat. It’s something I want to remember to implement in my own life.”

“Probably good advice for us all,” Carson agrees, turning his attention to Benny. “You’ve often been called the _enfant terrible_ of the US chess world; I’m not sure anyone would have expected you to be announcing that you’re settling down, let alone with another chess player.”

“I didn’t expect it myself,” Benny says, and Beth watches the slightest of smiles flit across his mouth. “But we all have to grow up sometime, and I think Beth’s taken us all by surprise these past couple of years.”

This isn’t Beth’s first time on _The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson_ ; when she first returned from Russia everyone wanted a piece of her, and the Federation steered her around the various channels where she repeated the same handful of anecdotes, still barely able to comprehend her win no matter how many times she vocalised it. Now, she’s here to talk about Moscow, to bring up the year’s tournaments and by extension the might of US chess players and, of course, to publicly discuss her upcoming marriage to Benny. Beth’s agent organised all this, but Beth knows the Federation will be watching, and she hopes this will raise their estimations of her a little; despite everything, she’d prefer to have them onside.

She blinks, realises that Benny has been talking and she’s not exactly been listening, hopes that it’s not obvious. 

“It sounds like you have a full year coming up,” Carson is saying.

“We do,” Beth agrees quickly. “I took a little time off after playing in Russia to evaluate what I wanted to do with my life, but I missed the chess world too much. I’d like to be World Champion before I turn twenty-five, so there’s no point wasting time.”

“The white picket fence might need to wait a while then?” Carson addresses his question to Benny, which makes Beth’s toes curl in her shoes.

“We’re both young and at the top of our game,” Benny shrugs. “I’ve never played better in my life, and I know Beth feels the same way. In a best-case scenario, we’ll be fighting each other for World Champion.”

There’s a mixture of laughter and murmuring in the audience; Beth bites the inside of her lower lip where no one can see.

“We make each other better players,” she says. “When we got engaged we discussed it and there’s no reason why either of us would want to retire.”

Benny reaches over and takes Beth’s hand; she doesn’t know if he’s planned the gesture or if it’s on impulse but she’s glad to have something to hold onto.

“Our kids will be our many, many tournament titles,” he says blithely and Beth grins at him, she can’t help it.

“Then I hope you have at least a dozen,” Carson says, and they cut to commercials.

There’s a table set up for them, a clock and a chess set laid out on it. They have a short demonstration after the break, before they cut to the band. Beth drinks half a glass of water and hopes her cheeks aren’t too flushed.

“You okay?” Benny asks.

“Sure,” Beth replies, because what else is there to say?

Benny was never going to be allowed to wear his knife into the studio and the hat and leather coat stayed in his apartment; his jeans look like they might be actually clean, and while there are too many buttons undone on his shirt, it’s actually been pressed. The handful of silver chains around his neck are bright under the studio lights. It’s his version of respectable, and it makes Beth feel confusingly fond. He leans in close so the microphones won’t pick up his voice. “Fuck every single person out there who thinks I should have you barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen the minute we get hitched.”

Something fierce and grateful squirms in Beth; she pushes it down. “You’re only saying that because you know I can’t cook.”

He smirks. “In my experience, you’re a very fast learner.”

Beth digs her elbow into his side and lets the _Tonight Show_ team tell them where to go, sits down at the board to play Black to Benny’s White. When they get back from the commercials, Carson tells the audience that he couldn’t have the country’s greatest chess players on without a demonstration, and there’s a round of applause. Beth looks to the camera she’s been told to hit to explain: “this isn’t much good in tournaments, but it’s a great training exercise.” She looks to Benny, who winks.

Before they went on air, Beth told him: “you can’t hustle me for money on live television.”

“We’ll add it up afterwards,” he told her, and got swept off to make-up.

Speed chess seemed like the most logical thing to do: no regular television audience wants to watch two people glaring at each other over a board while shifting the pieces in increments that are only impressive if you know the rules. Make it all faster, and it’s impressive even to the uninitiated: the clicking of the pieces and the clock, the swift captures, the reflexes to spot moves and keep the game going. Beth can feel the buzz from the people watching; even if they’re not completely sure what’s happening, they know that Beth and Benny know and are analysing every move to keep pace at lightning-fast speeds. Beth gets more captures but Benny beats her in the end with a nicely-placed rook; the audience’s applause is loud and genuine.

“Again?” Beth offers, like she’s basically scripted to do, and does not think about the number of times she and Benny have said that to each other, the meaning changing every time.

They set the pieces back into place with practiced quick precision; Beth takes a breath and then hits Benny’s clock. Then she can’t think about anything but the game, snapping the pieces back and forth, picking her moves faster than conscious thought can name them. This time she gets Benny, exchanging queens and pinning his king in the space of a handful of heartbeats.

Part of her wants to go for a third, but that’s not what they’ve been contracted for; they both stand and shake hands across the board while there are claps and even a few cheers in the audience. Benny is grinning and Beth suspects she might be too: no matter what else is happening, very few things energise her the way playing against Benny does. 

It’s there, under the bright studio lights with the crowd watching them in person and who knows how many on television, that Benny cups her cheek, leans in and kisses her.

It’s a television kiss: closed-mouth, gentle. Beth’s eyes flutter shut anyway. Benny’s lips are warm and his moustache tickles her face and his hand is splayed against her skin, and Beth can’t believe that she forgot what this felt like. 

Benny pulls away and Beth blinks against the suddenly blinding studio lights, and if anything the audience is clapping and cheering louder. She thinks she’s blushing but that’s probably natural and of course, Benny is a natural showman. It’s a good ending to their segment; it’s a good ending to pretty much any game they’ve ever played against each other.

Beth slams into her dressing room and presses her hands to her hot cheeks and tells herself that she isn’t trembling. She barely has time to take a few deep breaths before the door is opening, Benny letting himself in. He has his own dressing room, and Beth is about to tell him this when she sees that his expression is as wretched as hers must be. He closes the door and then stands there; if he had something that he was going to say, it’s gone now. He’s snapping his fingers in that way he does when he’s not sure what to do next. This is about half a step away from fidgeting compulsively with his ring; Beth knows all of his tells by now.

“Married people kiss each other,” Beth says into the silence, when it seems like Benny has nothing to offer. 

“Yeah,” he says, “I know.” His voice is a touch deeper, the way it is when he’s annoyed about something. “I just. I forgot. I forgot what kissing you is like.”

 _Fuck_ , thinks Beth. All this effort, and they’ll have to call off the wedding because she and Benny are incapable of acting like mature adults. It’s all the chess, she thinks, the unstable childhoods and the adult opponents when they were still children. It’s left them incapable of doing the sensible thing.

“I forgot too,” she admits, anything to get that look off Benny’s face. “It’s. It’s fine. We can-”

She’s got no idea what she’s about to say so it’s a relief when Benny grabs her and kisses her. This kiss isn’t for an audience, isn’t for television; Beth’s lips open against his and she swallows his groan as she sinks her hands into her hair. Benny pushes her and Beth bumps back into her dressing table; she hears several things fall over and doesn’t care, all her focus on where Benny is biting her bottom lip with impatient teeth, his tongue sliding into her mouth like they’ve been doing this ever since Sixty-Seven, not dancing around it pretending it never happened in the first place. Beth makes a soft sound that gets crushed into the kiss, Benny pressing her harder into the table, one of her hands fisting in his hair like that can get him closer. 

The door opens again; someone makes a surprised noise, and they snap apart to find an embarrassed-looking assistant apologising hastily. “I was just wondering if I could get you something, but-”

“Coffee would be great, thank you,” Beth says in a voice that doesn’t sound like hers.

“Sure,” he says, and vanishes into the hallway.

Beth takes several deep breaths before she dares look at Benny. He looks… well, debauched is the first thing that comes to mind, mouth kiss-swollen and smeared with Beth’s lipstick, hair a wreck from her hands. He also looks vaguely stricken; Beth suspects her expression matches.

“Okay,” he says, slowly, his voice cracking on the word. “Well. I guess we always knew we were attracted to each other, that… hasn’t changed.”

Part of Beth wants to run out of the dressing room; part of her wants to jam a chair underneath the door handle and pull Benny close again. She shuts her eyes and breathes slowly and lets the only part of her still thinking logically take over.

“It’s the tension,” she says, and it almost comes out believable. “We’re doing something weird and stressful and entirely out of our normal lives, and we’re not used to each other yet. We will be. That’s… that’s all it is.”

Benny’s eyes are bright and dark and Beth wishes she could see what he’s thinking and is glad that she can’t. “Yeah,” he says, and he sounds steadier now, “it’s been a long time. That’s all it is.”

Beth nods, and he gives her a weak smile. Maybe when he’s washed his face and combed his hair he might be able to sell that line better; maybe then Beth will be able to believe it herself. It’s not like they have much choice: it’s way, way too late to back out now. 

-

Fucking was, frankly, what fucked it up for them the first time around.

It took much longer than most of Beth’s post-game analyses, but she did finally sort through the wreckage of her whatever-that-was with Benny Watts, an amount of it after he told her not to contact him again and she was sitting on hold for hours at a time. The bitterness of all but begging for money from organisations who couldn’t care less what she wanted was making her desperate for a drink or three anyway, reflecting on the frustrated coolness in Benny’s voice before he hung up on her didn’t make it any worse. They always had the potential for volatility, Harry wasn’t wrong when he called all chess players prima donnas; both of them are very good, and a lot of the time Beth is better. You put two minds accustomed to being the sharpest in the room together – of course there was a volatility there. Adding sex to the equation, even startlingly good sex that forced Beth to reconsider her previous assumptions that the whole thing was basically overrated, was never going to end well. Once you start having sex with someone you open the door to other desires, to assumptions and jealousies and resentments and cruelties. There were a number of reasons that Beth never went back to New York, many of them tenuous and stupid now that she isn’t viewing them through a haze of pharmaceuticals, but one of them was simply that she didn’t know _how_ to go back to Benny.

They sit up all night in Benny’s apartment, sharing a packet of cigarettes and a chess board. Beth was supposed to be getting a late night flight but she moved it to tomorrow; much as she wants to flee, put this behind them as an aberration, there’s a wedding mostly planned in their imminent future. 

Beth plays the Budapest Gambit; Benny responds with the Kieninger Trap. It’s so late that the street outside has fallen quiet, no cars or drunken neighbours staggering past the windows. There’s the faintest rise and fall of the ongoing argument between the residents two doors down and two floors up. Beth had forgotten about that; the nights she spent trying to get comfortable on the airbed, watching the spill of dim light from Benny’s room where he was still awake dappling the ceiling, listening to the vague but constant fury between his neighbours.

“Did you ever figure out what language that is?” she asks. It’s the first time either of them has spoken in at least an hour; her voice feels rusty, and she wonders if she can face another cup of coffee.

The corner of Benny’s mouth quirks. “Well, it’s not Czech, we crossed that one off. Hilton swears it’s Hungarian, but it’s not like we can prove it.”

“You could always go ask,” Beth muses. “You’re leaving anyway.”

“Yeah,” Benny replies, “I’m sure that won’t get me a broken nose as a parting gift.”

Beth shrugs a shoulder, pushes a pawn. “I’m sure that could only add to your mystique,” she tells him. “You walk around like you’re in a spaghetti western, now you’ll have the face to match.”

“It would ruin the wedding photos,” Benny responds, takes her pawn with his free knight.

Beth’s heart thuds and her stomach drops; for a moment there, she forgot why she was here. It’s always been too easy to fall into a rhythm with Benny, whether they’re playing chess or keeping up with each other’s conversation.

“We’re still doing that,” she says. It’s not a question, but it lacks the certainty of a statement.

Benny studies her for a moment, caught in the glare of his surprisingly bright ceiling light. A stream of smoke spills from between his lips, drifts past those sharp bottomless eyes, and Beth wonders briefly if this was what he meant when he said that she looks at people like she’s about to collapse their middle game; if this is what he sees too often on her face.

“I can do it if you can do it,” he says at last. 

For a moment, Beth isn’t sure that she _can_ do it; but she’s never quailed at a challenge, never managed to say no to Benny when he looks at her the way he’s looking at her now, and she holds out a hand. He takes it, solemn, and they shake on it, more binding than any of the oaths or paperwork that will be witnessed officially.

“Oh,” Benny adds when he lets go, “also: check.”

Beth looks back down at the board to see that he’s right; the laughter bubbles up out of her, some of it relief, some of it panic, some of it unbearably, inescapably fond.

-

Jolene drives Beth to Chicago two days before the tournament is due to begin. Beth offered to fly them both, even told Jolene she could arrive later so she’s not there for the whole thing, but Jolene insisted: _I want you to have the option to turn the damn car around whenever you want_. It could also be that Jolene just wants to spend the time together; Beth is grateful for it, the hours they spend singing along to the radio and talking about everything and nothing, something Beth didn’t have in the years between leaving Methuen and Jolene finding her again. She didn’t know how much she’d _missed_ it until she had it back again.

The car is surprisingly full. There’s Beth’s usual little case of things for the tournament, neat blouses and flat shoes and scarves to keep her hair out of her eyes; Jolene’s case, which is half-full of textbooks ( _“I’m not spending an entire week watching you push bits of wood around”_ ); then there’s Beth’s wedding outfit, carefully encased in a garment bag, and a much bigger case taking up most of the trunk with everything she could think to take on a sexless honeymoon in a city she swore she’d never return to. Her books are considerably lighter than Jolene’s law ones, but she’s also packed several. When they change lanes, everything rattles.

Back in Lexington, Beth’s house is packed up for the foreseeable future. She’s cancelled the papers, moved the address for her magazine subscription, found one of the neighbourhood kids to mow the lawn twice a month. Most of her stuff is staying put, but there are boxes of books and clothes and a handful of trophies that she’s won and Benny hasn’t, taped up and labelled and waiting to be shipped to the new apartment in New York. In truth, Beth’s book collection probably overlaps with Benny’s for the most part and they don’t need two sets of everything – but Benny’s books and magazines have his notes and annotations and bookmarks, and Beth’s have hers, and she doesn’t want to be without them. Townes and Jolene have copies of the house keys to let the movers in and to keep an eye on the place when Beth’s away. It might be more sensible to sell the place, invest in some real estate in a big city somewhere, but it’s her home and while she can afford to own it and rent elsewhere, she will.

The hotel is enormous and Beth is grateful for the bellboy who leaps to their assistance, helping them drag their book-filled cases to a luggage trolley. The lobby is pretty full of competitors and spectators already checking in, and heads turn as Beth walks through.

“Huh,” Jolene says speculatively, “I’m not paying for a drink this whole week.”

“Probably,” Beth smiles, nodding to a couple of people she recognises.

Jolene left all the plans with Beth, stipulating only that she wanted a comfortable bed and access to plenty of room service, and it wouldn’t have been hard to secure a suite but Beth booked them a twin room. Some of it’s nostalgia for travelling with Alma, some of it’s a reminder of sleeping side by side in the Methuen dormitory, and some of it’s a desire not to be alone this week. There’s plenty of space of them both, anyway, and Jolene kicks off her boots and flops onto a bed with a girlish laugh while Beth uses her nervous energy to unpack, hanging up the garment bag in the darkest corner of the closet where she can hide it behind her regular clothes. 

“You’re gonna win this whole thing, right?” Jolene asks, as Beth places her chessboard, notebook and childhood copy of _Modern Chess Openings_ on the desk, making sure to leave space for Jolene’s books.

“I think so,” Beth replies, giving up on flitting around the room and sinking into a chair by the window. “There are some European players I’ve not faced before, I’ve read some of their games but I won’t know until I play them.”

Jolene nods, looking thoughtful. “Okay,” she says. “Fix your hair and we’ll go sit in the bar and let people send you free cocktails that I will drink for you and you can look regal and terrifying so they all piss themselves at the thought of facing you.”

“Maybe I don’t know how to look ‘regal and terrifying’,” Beth offers, but she’s already sitting down at the dressing table.

“Uh-huh,” Jolene says dryly. “You just go on thinking that.”

Beth has told a selection of reporters lately that the reason she doesn’t have an engagement ring is because she doesn’t enjoy playing chess with anything on her fingers. It sounds like the thinnest of lies, but is actually the truth: the watch Alma gave her is the only thing she can bear to wear on her arm, she’s never liked the shifting or flash of jewellery when she reaches to make a move. Benny might not be able to buy her a ring, but Beth could easily have bought her own, as modest or flashy as she wanted. She’s still not sure how long it will take to get used to wearing a wedding ring; she spent a long time with a jeweller finding one simple and lightweight enough that she didn’t want to pull it off immediately. But even with her preferences publicly stated, Beth is aware of people’s gazes dropping to her naked left hand.

“I don’t think they think I’m going to go through with it,” Beth tells Jolene.

Jolene, sipping a Screwdriver sent over by a young man Beth soundly thrashed in what she thinks was San Francisco, screws up her mouth. “ _I’m_ still not sure you’re going through with it,” she says. “You just say the word, and I’ll come to Paris with you until the heat dies down.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Beth sighs, and Jolene toasts her.

-

Things progress as they usually do: the early rounds pass by easily enough, Beth neatly defeating her opponents – none of whom looks particularly pleased to face her – and talking to the press that are already here this early in the week. Jolene comes for a few of the matches but spends more time in their room or the bar, working on a paper with a stack of textbooks in front of her, turning away both Open attendees and the press when they try to get gossip on Beth’s strategies or her wedding. Beth joins her between games for sodas and conversation, both usually interrupted by fans with questions, but Jolene seems to find the whole thing quietly amusing so Beth isn’t too embarrassed.

In the evenings, they go to dinner and once the movies, and then Beth swims laps of the hotel’s pool alone – “this hair does not get wet,” Jolene informs her – and replays any matches from earlier that she hasn’t already worked on, checking for weaknesses or laziness, scrutinising her opponents for moments of unexpected genius in case they end up coming across one another later on. They get coffee and candy delivered from room service, watch the old movies Alma loved so much, and when Beth struggles to sleep she listens to Jolene breathing in the bed across from hers until it lulls her into something like calm.

Townes arrives in the middle of the competition, bringing his camera and dictaphone, and whisks the two of them off to a restaurant on the other side of the city that looks like nothing from the outside but is warm and friendly inside and has the most _gorgeous_ food. Townes and Jolene have met before but never spent much time together, and Beth spends most of the meal watching them charm each other. Townes is well-read in a way Beth has never tried to be, and he and Jolene avidly discuss Maya Angelou and Christopher Isherwood, Sylvia Plath and James Baldwin. Beth doesn’t even try to participate in the conversation but enjoys the sound of it flowing over her, pleased to see people she cares about getting on so well. She and Townes discuss the tournament in the cab back, Jolene interjecting with her largely unfavourable opinions of the players Beth has faced, and it’s such a fun evening that Beth almost forgets the knot of nerves that took up residence in her stomach the minute they left Kentucky.

Beth is making her way to the restaurant for some lunch between games when she hears a familiar drawl and stops short; Benny was due sometime today, but she assumed that she’d be _told_ when he arrived. Feeling ridiculous, she hides behind a decorative pillar and peers down into the lobby where Benny has taken up residence on a couch, hat and coat and easy performative grin. _Jesus_ , Beth thinks vaguely, _I’m marrying that._

“I don’t understand your question,” Benny is saying to a reporter, Beth thinks he’s the guy from _Chess Life_. “I don’t think there’s anything emasculating about marrying Beth Harmon.”

Beth lets out a startled noise, manages to suck most of it back in at the last minute, and sincerely hopes that no one spots her eavesdropping on her fiancé.

The interviewer tries to cut in, but Beth recognises the stubborn expression Benny has transitioned to. “No,” he says, “Beth is a genius. She always pushes to be better, and that makes me a better player, keeping up with her. The only emasculating thing would be if I was too afraid to meet that challenge.”

Beth’s heart is thumping in a way that it wasn’t earlier, exchanging queens with a talented grandmaster from Poland, and she finds that there’s something a little tight in her throat. She reflects that she should probably stop hiding from Benny and possibly rescue the interviewer from the annoyed set of Benny’s jaw, and hurries to the stairs so she can look like she’s just arrived, graceful and serendipitous. Benny looks up at the movement in his eyeline and grins.

“Darling,” he calls, loud enough for most of the lobby to turn around and stare.

“Benny,” she responds as he gets up and walks toward her, interviewer summarily abandoned. They meet at the foot of the stairs; Benny kisses her cheek, a brief warm brush against her skin, and Beth finds herself glad that he’s here after all.

“You chose a pet name then,” she says softly.

“Not necessarily,” he replies, “I’ve got plenty of time to try them all out.” Throwing an arm around her shoulders, he raises his voice to say: “now, let me take you to lunch and you can tell me about all the misogynists you’ve made cry lately.”

It’s laughably unsubtle, but Beth finds herself grinning at him and saying: “I’d love to.”

-

Matt arrives in time for an after-dinner drink, crumpled and yawning from spending most of the day on a greyhound. Beth’s pleased to see him, and not just because he’s a wedding guest: she’s been sat alone for the best part of half an hour since Jolene cornered Benny and took him off to a table too far away for Beth to eavesdrop.

“Is she threatening him?” Matt asks, putting a fresh coke in front of Beth and sitting down with his beer. She looks at it longingly almost as a reflex; she doesn’t want a beer right now, but she does crave the peacefulness that four of them would bring. She can’t remember the last time she slept through the night.

“I thought she was,” Beth replies, “but the violent hand gestures stopped a while back.”

“Jolene is as terrifying as you are,” Matt tells her, “I’m sure she can threaten Benny without needing hand gestures.”

Beth tries to feign offence and not laugh but she can’t help smiling when Matt meets her gaze and winks. He takes a sip of beer, and fails to hide a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Couldn’t you have driven up with Mike?” Beth asks. 

Matt shrugs. “He and Susan are driving up with Harry and June, fifth wheel did _not_ appeal.”

Beth nods sympathetically and then, because it’s just them in a half-quiet hotel bar, says: “…do you think it’s weird, me inviting June to the wedding?”

“I think it’d be awkward, you not inviting your friend’s girl,” Matt replies, carefully diplomatic.

Beth could leave it there, but on the other side of the room Benny says something that makes Jolene laugh, and there’s a strange calm to tonight that won’t last.

“That’s not what I meant,” she says, but considers it a moment. “I guess it depends on what June knows.”

“Don’t look at me,” Matt replies. “Although if she finds out, she should thank you: Harry’s teeth _really_ needed fixing.”

Beth swallows a guilty laugh; Matt smirks genially at her and takes a long swig of beer. She notices that he’s careful to put the bottle back on the table as far away from her as possible, an intended kindness which smarts a little anyway. Beth looks at him and thinks about Benny’s tone whenever he talks about Harry; she’ll never ask him, but she can ask Matt. 

“How did you find out?” she says quietly. “About me and Harry, I mean.”

“You should know better than anyone that the chess world is full of rumour and gossip,” Matt reminds her. He takes another sip of beer, picks at the label with his thumb while he considers his answer. “Harry crashed out of chess like the floor had gone out from under him. We were still seeing him at meets, at clubs, you know? And then nothing.” Matt shoots Beth a look, like he’s not sure if he should continue; Beth tries to keep her expression neutral, her hands from fidgeting in her lap. “Well, Mike and I took over a bunch of beers, sat in his apartment and made him talk to us.” Matt smiles, a little sadly. “He didn’t talk much, but it was about what he didn’t say, you know?”

Beth nods. She’d love to go back to fix a lot of the mistakes she made that year; a lot of it was grief, but some of it wasn’t. She didn’t know her own strength back then, honestly didn’t know what she was doing – but then she left Paris without even speaking to Cleo, dragged Benny along on the phone until he couldn’t take it anymore, and maybe Beth still hasn’t learned better.

“Alright,” she says slowly, “but then how did Benny find out?”

Matt laughs, and when Beth turns to look at him shrugs and says: “Benny Watts knows everything about everyone, you know that.” He grins. “When you get married, legally, half his gossip becomes yours.”

“Damn,” Beth says, “I hadn’t even thought about that.”

“Use your secrets wisely,” Matt advises, draining his beer. “And obviously, pass on anything good.” He puts the bottle on the table, tilts his head at it. “Mind if I have another?”

“Go ahead,” Beth says, and he heads off to the bar. Benny and Jolene are still talking intently; she tells herself that she’s definitely not uneasy.

Matt isn’t back from the bar when Townes appears, threading through the half-empty tables to join Beth. “I’ve been doing my job,” he says in response to her questioning look, “interviewing a few of your upcoming victims. I’ve been very professional, definitely not undermining their confidence.”

“Of course not,” Beth agrees. She tips her head towards Benny and Jolene. “You didn’t overhear what they were talking about, did you?”

“I think it was poetry,” Townes says, adding: “yes, I know, Benny’s only interest is chess, but he’s part of that New York intellectual set, you learn it by osmosis. I’m fully expecting it to become part of you too.”

“I’m sure it started out with Jolene threatening him,” Beth says mildly.

“It probably did,” Townes says. He reaches over to take Beth’s hand. “You’ve got a lot of people on your side, you know.”

Beth squeezes his hand, smiles. “I know.”

-

Beth wakes from an unsettled sleep on her wedding day to find Jolene is already up, smoking a cigarette and calling for coffee and toast from room service.

“Morning,” Jolene says, “get out of bed, you’ve got a guy’s ego to mercilessly crush. Oh, and that chess game, I guess.”

Beth laughs and it nearly feels natural; she washes her face and styles her hair, slips on the skirt and sweater she selected for the Tournament final today and eats her breakfast while Jolene reads her an article from the _Chicago Tribune_ that’s meant to be about the competition and is frankly more about the wedding. They do at least mention several of the games Beth and Benny have played against each other and have printed the game that got Beth to the final, so she counts it as an overall improvement.

The conference hall where they’ve been playing has been set up for the final, a couple of rows of chairs for spectators and then standing room only, the enormous representation of the board stood ready. Everyone Beth passes in the halls wants to stop her to talk about chess or the wedding or both, and in the end Jolene takes over as bodyguard so she won’t be late, herding Beth through the crowds and delivering her to the raised dais they’ll be playing on. The press take up most of the front row of chairs, their cameras and notebooks at the ready, but Benny is also sitting dead centre, the best seat in the house, leaning over the back of his chair to say something to Mike in the row behind. The chair next to Benny has his hat casually thrown on it; Jolene hugs Beth and then walks over to take it, unceremoniously plunking Benny’s hat back on his head, making him look at her with something that’s a cross between a smile and a glare. June and Susan are sitting side by side in the second row and wave the minute Beth spots them; Harry’s there too, while Wexler, Levertov and Matt are in the third row. Beth thinks briefly of the high school football games that she never attended, of the cheerleaders and supporters in the stands.

Benny comes over to Beth, puts his hands on her shoulders. “You ready?”

“I am,” Beth says. “Sterling is a strong player, but he always tries to play Italian. I’ve got this.”

Benny grins, leans in to brush his mouth over hers, lingering just a moment longer than necessary. There’s a buzz in the audience; some laughter, a few claps. “For luck,” Benny says softly.

“Luck is a loser’s word,” Beth reminds him, but she’s smiling anyway.

“Oh, the luck’s not for you,” Benny replies, “it’s for Sterling, the poor bastard. Slaughter him, Beth.”

He saunters back to his seat, all swagger and smirk. Beth catches Townes’ eye where he’s sitting among the journalists; he winks.

Sterling is perhaps a decade older than Beth, smart in a suit and combed-flat blonde hair. He’s the Illinois state champion and placed third in Munich last month; Beth has been watching him with care all week, reasonably sure that his trajectory was leading here. She thinks she’s found most of his flaws, a few weaknesses to exploit, but it’s entirely possible they’re heading for a draw here. She’d prefer to avoid that, hates the anti-climax of a mutual win, a mutual loss, but that’s where a lot of grandmaster games end and she’s slowly starting to accept it. 

They shake hands, sit down as the room quiets. Sterling is playing White to Beth’s Black, and leads with his king pawn as she was expecting, developing his bishop in the Italian style; Beth considers before playing the Two Knights Defence that she planned last night, working through a few last variations while Jolene called from the bathroom that she wanted lights out in ten minutes, get your ass into bed. Part of her worried that she would be distracted by everything else that’s happening, but she isn’t. The moment she slips into the world of the board, of her little kingdom, she doesn’t think about anything else. Not her friends watching, not her appointment at city hall, not what she’s supposed to do after this with a ridiculous frustrating handsome husband in name only. 

Beth was fully prepared for this game to take hours, it’s partly why the match was arranged for early in the day, but it takes less than half an hour, barely two dozen moves for her to net Stirling’s king, and he holds out a hand with a wry grin. The rest of world slowly returns in a roar of noise, flashbulbs and applause and some probably inappropriately loud cheering from Beth’s section of the audience. She lets Stirling’s hand go, stands to bow a little awkwardly, her success singing sweet and swift through her veins.

They pose for photographs with the board, reporters already asking questions, overlapping each other.

“What’s the best part of today: the Open final or your wedding?”

“I don’t know,” Beth says, “ask me again tonight. Although marriage didn’t come with a trophy, last I checked.”

There’s easy laughter, and Beth looks toward Benny, half-expecting him to sweep over and maybe kiss her and become part of this. He stays seated, tips his hat to her, and Beth laughs.

“How does it feel to play your last game as Elizabeth Harmon?” asks the _Chess Life_ man that Benny has been passively terrorising at every opportunity he can while Beth pretends not to notice.

“Oh, I’ll be keeping my name for competitions,” she corrects him lightly. “No one needs to get confused about which Watts is which, particularly if we’re playing against each other.”

A few more minutes of questions and then Beth tells them she has to go; she has a wedding to prepare for after all. Applause rings through the hall as she leaves, Jolene hurrying to accompany her, and Beth wishes that she could capture this feeling, cup it whole in her hands.

“In the shower with you,” Jolene orders once they get back to their room, and Beth obeys, turning up the water as hot as it will go and letting it pound down on her. Her heart thuds and hums and she can feel her victory high washing down the drain with the soap suds. _Fuck_ , she wants a drink, she wants a pill or two, she wants the world to stop and let her get off at a time when she doesn’t have to be responsible for herself, doesn’t have to make her own decisions and live with their consequences.

Jolene turns off the water, wraps Beth in a bathrobe, and sits with her on the bathroom floor while Beth sobs big, painful sobs. She puts a solid reassuring hand on the back of Beth’s neck, and says “I know, honey” from time to time, and doesn’t push her to stop or pull herself together until Beth’s started hiccupping.

“What do you need?” she asks quietly.

Beth sniffs, swipes at her face with the palms of her hands. “Adults,” she says. “I should have fucking _grown-ups_ here today, not whatever the fuck I am.”

Jolene reaches to grab a towel, gently wraps it around Beth’s head and starts squeezing the water out of Beth’s sodden hair. “What would your mama say, if she was here?”

Beth swallows a couple of times. “Probably that marriage is a trap and men are all the same. But she’d have embroidered my wedding dress for me, she was good at that.”

Jolene hums, carries on drying her hair. “And your other mama?”

“Alma?” Beth smiles against the sting, chokes a half-laugh. “Oh, she’d probably remind me of all the times I called Benny a _fucking pirate_. But she’d be happy too. We’d have gotten her a new hat, she’d look lovely.”

They sit in silence for a long moment, the bathroom floor tiles cold against Beth’s bare legs, and then Jolene drops a gentle kiss to Beth’s forehead. “C’mon, let’s get you pretty.”

It takes a couple of tries to stand, Beth is trembling so hard, but she makes it back into the main room, sits down at the dressing table to look at her puffy, wan face, her ratty wet hair. Somewhere behind her, Jolene calls room service, asks for sweet tea and sandwiches to be sent up, and a thought occurs to Beth.

“I need to speak to Townes,” she tells Jolene when she’s hung up. “It’s important.”

Jolene raises her eyebrows. “You finally realised that he’d make a much better fake husband?”

“I worked that out a long time ago,” Beth says, as Jolene picks the phone up again, asks reception to put her through to D.L. Townes’ room. She holds out the receiver and Beth takes it.

“Beth?”

“I need you to go to Benny,” she explains quickly, “I need you to make sure that he doesn’t get married in that fucking hat. Promise me, Townes.”

-

By mid-afternoon, Beth is something like composed again, the blind panic and unexpected grief at least far enough below the surface that she can function now. Jolene does her hair and most of her make-up for her, Beth’s hands are shaking too bad, and she stands back to look thoughtfully at her work. 

“You might just do,” she says.

Beth stands up and walks to look at herself in the room’s full-length mirror. She and Jolene looked at a number of wedding dresses, from the ultra-modern to long lace numbers that were impossible to move in, but none of them felt right. Instead, Beth is getting married in a crisp white pantsuit, the slacks sharply pleated, the double-breasted jacket fitted close. With her white shirt, she has an enormous black silk bowtie, the shape more feminine than the classic dicky bow. She has white silk heels – not too high, partly because she doesn’t want to turn an ankle, and partly because she’s pretty sure Benny doesn’t want her to be taller than him in all their wedding photos. She’s left her make-up simple: bold black eyeliner, of course, and warm soft red lipstick that was Alma’s favourite shade. 

There’s a quiet knock at the door; Jolene grins and hurries to open it. There’s a bellboy outside, holding two small boxes. Jolene thanks him, tips, and comes over to put the boxes on the desk. She opens one to reveal a simple bouquet of daisies, tied with white and black ribbons; in the other box is a matching spray for Beth’s lapel.

“Oh,” Beth breathes softly, as Jolene carries them over. “Jolene, you didn’t have to-”

“I’m looking forward to you throwing your bouquet at all those chess nerds,” Jolene tells her, carefully pinning the flowers to Beth’s jacket. “Don’t aim for me, I’m very happy with my freedom for a few more years.”

Jolene’s suit is black to Beth’s white, but her jacket has bigger lapels and she’s forgone a tie altogether. She looks amazing, and Beth makes sure to tell her.

“Yeah, us Methuen girls don’t clean up too bad,” Jolene agrees, throwing an arm around Beth’s shoulders as they look at themselves in the mirror. “Of course, I look at you and I still see that ugly little white trash cracker bitch stuffing her face with green vitamins.”

Beth laughs, tells herself she’s done enough crying for one day. “I’m glad someone does,” she says.

The last task is to carefully angle and pin the little white pillbox hat with its small netting veil on Beth’s carefully curled hair. She wasn’t going to have anything, but Jolene was insistent that she needed _something_ , and the saleswomen persuaded Beth into trying on hats. It’s not the most fashionable choice but Alma would have liked it, and that settled Beth.

“All right,” Jolene says, handing Beth her bouquet, “let’s do this.”

They haven’t invited anyone to the ceremony, since it’s going to be as short and necessary as it needs to be, but a surprisingly large number of people have gathered in the lobby. There are a few photographers, cameras clicking away, but mostly it’s Beth’s friends, her fellow chess-players, who applaud and whistle as she walks through. She waves a little awkwardly, hopes that she isn’t blushing.

“Just say the word and I’ll drive until we run out of gas,” Jolene says, as Beth carefully settles herself and her flowers in the passenger seat, but they actually just drive to the courthouse. There isn’t too much traffic, and on the radio Aretha Franklin sings about how the only boy who could ever reach her was the son of a preacher man. Jolene turns it up, and they sing along as they drive through the streets.

There are some more journalists and photographers waiting outside; Beth smiles for them but heads straight inside to find Benny. He’s waiting with Townes – when Beth asked if there was anyone Benny wanted, as his best man or his second or whoever, he just smiled wryly and shook his head, so Beth chose their witnesses – and looking a little nauseous, but he pulls together a smile for Beth.

“I did my best,” Townes offers, and Beth can see that. Benny’s wearing jeans, but they’re a clean black pair that look relatively new, and he’s actually wearing a neatly buttoned shirt with a pressed collar. No tie, but he does have a black suit jacket with a white daisy buttonhole to match Beth’s. Beth would assume that the jacket was a loan from one of his more respectable friends, but it actually looks tailored, fits properly on Benny’s narrow shoulders.

“I expected worse,” she offers, just for the way it makes Benny’s eyes crinkle.

He holds out a hand. “Well, shall we do this?”

Beth takes it without hesitation. “Let’s do this.”

The ceremony is short, mostly involving everyone signing a lot of paperwork. If Beth’s hands shake a little as she slips on Benny’s wedding ring, well, his are definitely shaking when he slides on hers. They sign the wedding certificate, and are told that they’re married. It seems so simple for something that’s been so enormous in Beth’s mind lately; it feels more unreal than ever. But there they are, man and wife, and Benny whispers “oh, what the hell” before he leans in to kiss her. Beth can hear Townes’ camera clicking; he brought a smaller one with him, saying that the pictures here would be for them, not for the press. Benny pulls away after a moment, and Beth pulls him back in, kisses him again, because they’re married, because the world hasn’t ended, because she saw the way his eyes widened and his mouth worked when he first saw her in her wedding finery, because she just fucking _wants_ to.

They get an array of photographs taken outside of city hall, easy poses that make them both laugh while Jolene rolls her eyes over a cigarette at them. She drives the four of them back to the hotel for the reception, which has been left pretty informal. They walk into the hotel’s lobby to be showered with handfuls of confetti from their laughing friends; Beth considers telling Benny how much is caught in his hair and then decides not to.

Their flight leaves for Paris tonight, deliberately arranged this way so there was no reason to throw an enormous and probably expensive party. Still, June and Susan have baked a cake, three carefully stacked layers, with a white king and queen crafted out of sugar on the top.

“We considered a chequerboard effect,” June says, as Beth hugs them both gratefully, “but who’d want to eat black frosting?”

“It’s perfect,” Beth assures them, more moved than she thinks she can admit.

Later, Beth throws her bouquet over her shoulder to the waiting crowd; there aren’t a lot of women here and she isn’t sure what she’s going to do if, say, June catches it, but it actually ends up in the startled arms of a seventeen-year-old from Cleveland at his first out-of-state tournament. He flushes a deep red and his mother looks scandalised while his father just laughs, and Beth kisses his cheek while the flashbulbs pop. 

They’re almost late for their flight but make it just in time, both of them in comfortable jeans and sweaters for the journey. Benny still has confetti in his hair and Beth is fairly sure her make-up has bled halfway across her face by now, but they slide into their seats laughing as the passengers they’ve held up glare in their direction.

“I think we got through that okay,” Benny says, and Beth looks down at the new gold ring on her finger and says: “…I think we did.”

Someone has clearly told the stewardesses about them, because they’re brought flutes of complementary champagne. After a brief discussion, Benny drinks them both and falls asleep not all that long after take-off; Beth digs out the copy of _The Sicilian Flank Game (Najdorf Version)_ that she packed in her hand luggage, her mind and body fizzing more than the champagne and hours away from resting. She could call the stewardess back; there’s nothing to stop her ordering a cocktail, Benny wouldn’t ever have to know, but instead she cracks the book open to give herself something to concentrate on. Eventually, Benny shifts in his sleep and his head winds up on her shoulder; Beth smiles to herself, rests her cheek against his hair, and carries on reading.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're wondering why they're reading _Chess Life_ now and not _Chess Review_ like in the show/part one, _Chess Review_ ceased publication in 1969. I told you I'd researched this.
> 
>  ~~I'm very sorry if you actually speak Spanish; I tried.~~ Spanish amended with advice from [BeluKertasOrang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeluKertasOrang/profile), thanks!
> 
> Part III has been written and is currently being kicked into shape, so nobody panic. Just me. I'll just panic.


	3. you toss and you tumble like dice in your bed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Thanks again to [finkpishnets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/finkpishnets/profile), [trobairitz22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trobairitz22/profile) and [HumiliatedRook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HumiliatedRook/profile) for betaing, encouraging, plot ideas, teasing, chess advice and the many other things you need when you're accidentally writing an epic. And, uh, apologies if you hoped this part was going be anything other than these two being exhausting to each other, these trash chess kids won't stop arguing.]

By the time they land at Orly airport, Beth has been awake for long enough that she’s seeing bright waves of colour every time she blinks. Benny, who slept through most of the trip, is crumpled-looking but cheerful courtesy of three cups of in-flight coffee and a cigarette; Beth lets him organise their luggage and pour her into a taxi. Everything feels too shiny, too noisy, too much. She winds down the car window and lets everything rush past her, roads and cars and streets and people; they’re nowhere familiar to her and yet Paris _is_ familiar, Paris is Paris, and she’s walked through it a hundred times in her mind since she crashed out of the Remy-Vallon Invitational. She dreams of it, still; eighteen years old and so sure of herself and then the boulevards drop from beneath her feet and she’s drowning while over her head the black and white pieces grind on and on and on.

A blink, a crackle of noise on the radio, and it’s now, Benny silently watching her from his side of the cab. Beth doesn’t know what’s on her face and is way too tired to try to assemble a normal expression. Maybe this is why you don’t give children tranquillisers to keep them quiet and then leave them to spend the rest of their lives trying to work out how to sleep. 

The hotel lobby has an enormous chandelier and the light is distracting, blinding; Beth tunes in and out of Benny checking them in, trying not to look as insomnia-drunk as she feels, Paris has seen her humiliate herself enough, no one is looking at her but it feels like everyone is staring, muttering, like somehow everyone was in the room back in Sixty-Seven and watched her fall to pieces like an amateur. Benny takes her arm and she lets him, leaning gratefully against the elevator wall and not looking at any of the mirrored surfaces, sure she must look as bad as she feels. 

They have the penthouse at the top of the hotel; probably needlessly extravagant, but Beth can afford it, and she needed some kind of incentive to come back here. The travel agent didn’t even blink when Beth stipulated that she wanted two bedrooms for her honeymoon, so maybe it’s more regular than she thinks: couples who want to sleep apart or maybe just like a little variety. They have their own living room area and Beth collapses into an impossibly soft couch, swallowed up by it.

“What do we do now?” she asks with a mouth that doesn’t feel like hers. She can’t remember the last time she spoke; it might have been around the time Benny asked the stewardess not to bring Beth a fifth cup of coffee. 

“It’s your honeymoon,” Benny replies, “you can do whatever you like.”

There’s a knock at the door and he goes to collect their luggage; Beth listens to the brisk flurry of French like it’s happening behind a wall of glass. Benny comes back, his expression thoughtful, maybe tentative. He crouches down, places a steady hand on each of Beth’s knees. 

“What do you need?” he asks softly.

Beth thinks of every green cross she saw as they drove here, the promise in every _pharmacie_ sign above a crowded glass window. If she asked now, strung-out on lack of sleep, Benny might cave. She could get some rest and later Paris wouldn’t seem so bad, so judgemental, so knowing, and this whole sham of a marriage wouldn’t matter at all. She could just spend her time in this beautiful room with Benny, playing chess and beating him every single time, the pieces dancing to her tune and her tune alone. It might kill some part of Benny to get the pills for her and she doesn’t know what it would mean for her in the long run, but right now it’s almost worth it. 

“I want to sleep for about three days,” Beth manages at last. 

Benny nods. “Okay.” He pushes himself upright, walks away, and for a moment Beth wonders if he’s read her mind, is off to find someone in Paris willing to give him tranquillisers. Instead, there’s the sound of zippers and rummaging. By the time Beth pushes herself upright to try and work out what Benny is doing he’s walking back to her, carrying a pair of her pyjamas and her washbag. “Bathroom,” he says, handing them to her.

The bathroom is beautiful, glossy and mirrored and containing an enormous bathtub with which Beth is looking forward to getting acquainted. She suspects she might drown if she did right now though; she manages to change into her pyjamas without falling over, to pee and brush her teeth and wash her face, all of it happening with shaking hands that feel a long way away. She comes back into the living room feeling oddly childlike in her bare feet and pale green check pyjamas, cheeks smudged with cold cream and the curl fallen from her hair, but there’s no sign of Benny. There’s an open door, and Beth walks toward it.

Benny has closed the drapes, plunging the bedroom into darkness, and there’s a dim lamp casting a narrow pool of light over one side of the double bed. He’s put a glass of water on the nightstand and turned back the covers, clean white and inviting. Beth thinks vaguely of wedding nights and swallows a grim smile, stumbling over to crawl between the sheets. They’re soft and cool, enveloping her immediately, but she’s not sure it’s enough.

“There,” Benny says quietly, leaning to turn out the light, leaving them in the almost-dark but for the daylight still spilling through the open door. He reaches out and then seems to think better of it, straightening up and pulling his hand back. Beth catches it, not sure what she’s asking for, just her head is swimming and the room is too light and too dark and while her thoughts are sluggish they’re still moving too fast to rest.

“Okay,” Benny murmurs, “hold on,” and pulls easily out of her grasp.

Beth lies in the half-dark and waits, the sound of Benny moving around next door lost in the tired roaring in her ears. He reappears after a while, tugging his sweater over his head and discarding it somewhere, closing the door behind him. He swears softly when he bumps into the bed but then the light on the other nightstand snaps on and Benny settles himself on top the covers, t-shirt and jeans and bare feet, back to the headboard. He looks untidy, still a touch jetlagged; when Beth breathes in she can smell the stale air of the plane, coffee, cigarettes, a slight sweat and something that is only Benny. He shifts to get himself comfortable and opens Beth’s battered old copy of _Modern Chess Openings_. 

“Close your eyes,” he orders, and Beth obeys, rolls over away from the light. There’s the sound of pages turning, and then he starts: “‘The Dragon Variation – including the Accelerated Dragon. The Dragon Variation is Black’s most direct attacking (or counterattacking) scheme in the Sicilian. The fianchettoed bishop on g7 exerts a powerful influence on the long diagonal, bearing down on the centre and queenside. The opening is named for the serpentlike pawn formation of Black’s kingside. The name is also appropriate for the aggressive, dangerous character of the defence. Black can generate crushing attacks when things go his way, or his position can go up in flames itself.’”

Beth knows these words, has read them maybe hundreds of times. She remembers the long, long nights in her Methuen bed, taking what the book said and playing through it with the chess pieces in her mind, twirling high above her head while around her little girls breathed and snored and twitched in slumber. Benny keeps reading through the introduction and into the strings of positions; at first, Beth follows along, moving pieces behind her closed eyelids to match, but then the pieces start sliding away from her and the specifics of Benny’s reading turn into the quiet rise and fall of his voice, a thread to follow downwards until that’s gone too.

-

Beth really does sleep through most of the first two days of their trip; she wakes up at random hours to stagger to the bathroom or wander into the main room in search of one of the endless platters of delicate pastries that always seem to appear when she’s hungry. Sometimes Benny is there too, curled up on one of the couches or at the desk with a work from a Russian grandmaster and a hefty Cyrillic dictionary. When it’s daytime, the sunlight filters gold through his hair and he always looks entirely comfortable and at home, shirtsleeves rolled up, cigarette dangling from his quirked lips or an idle hand. Sometimes Benny is in his own room and their living room is dark, drapes pulled back to let the Parisian streetlights shine in. Beth calls for coffee and cake, sits up at midnight eating millefeuille with the lights out, bare toes curled in the carpet, feeling decadent and ridiculous and like she’s really on vacation, nowhere to be in the morning, no expectations from anyone tomorrow. She leaves the dishes across the coffee table, remembers to brush her teeth before she goes back to bed.

Finally, Beth snaps awake and doesn’t immediately want to stick her head back under the pillow. Her case is in her room, some of her clothes hopelessly crumpled from where Benny rummaged through when they first arrived, and Beth pulls out clean underwear and a sundress, takes a long shower and carefully dries her hair, applies her make-up looking at the spark that’s back in her eyes. She can’t remember the last time she felt this well-rested, and it probably shows.

“Well,” Benny says, “you look a little more coherent. Fancy venturing outside?”

“Sure,” Beth replies, even as her stomach clenches. “Where are we going?”

“Just walking,” Benny replies, “get some sunshine, stretch our legs, eat something somewhere other than our hotel room. That kind of thing.”

Beth goes to fetch her purse, slip on a light cardigan and a pair of pale lace-ups that complement the dress. On a whim, she adds an oversized sunhat she bought with no real intention of ever wearing it, unsure if she’d even need it. Benny is waiting for her, back in his regular cowboy get-up, and Beth rolls her eyes.

“I thought the love of a good woman was going to help you mend your ways.”

“Oh, we’ve not been married nearly long enough for you to start trying to change me,” Benny replies. “It takes time for a man to settle down, you know.”

Beth shakes her head because she’s almost entirely certain that part of the reason they’re married now is that Benny never intends to settle down, but she can’t really blame him because she doesn’t either. 

They get a few knowing looks from the concierge as they walk through the lobby, and Beth supposes that newly-married couples probably _don’t_ emerge from their hotel rooms for the first few days. They may not be busy industriously sleeping in separate rooms but Beth can’t complain about it.

The streets are full of spring sunshine and Parisians strolling through it. Benny turns a few heads because he always does, but Beth realises after a while that she’s garnering her own share of attention, and feels a touch less like an aspirational little girl staring hopelessly at the impossibly chic women of this city. Benny catches her looking in all the boutique windows, and smirks.

“I will not be playing the dutiful husband, trailing you from store to store,” he warns. “You can do that part without me.”

“I always intended to,” Beth replies, already resolved to return here in the next few days.

She’s happy to amble, but it becomes apparent that Benny seems to actually know where they’re going; on Beth’s last visit she mostly got in and out of cabs, tried to find her own way with a hopelessly creased tourist map and never did get comfortable with it.

“I lived here for six months,” Benny replies easily, when she brings it up. “Won a bunch of European competitions, played a lot of Trente et Quarante, made at least three highly-ranked French players cry. This would have been… Sixty-Four, I guess.”

Beth thinks back to how she spent Sixty-Four; mostly daydreaming through her classes, periodically faking something contagious so she and Alma could fly to domestic tournaments, their ruses usually ruined by the amount of print media Beth appeared in that never did want to quote anything she actually said. 

“I wanted to move to Paris when I first came here,” she admits, trying not to think of that drunken little girl telling her plans to Cleo in a hotel bar still thinking that she was untouchable.

“You still can,” Benny replies, like it’s that easy, like it could _be_ that easy.

They stroll in a comfortable silence for a while until Beth finally thinks to ask where they’re actually _going_. 

“Beautiful day like this?” Benny shrugs. “It’s a waste if you don’t go to a park.”

“The Jardins du Luxembourg?” Beth asks.

There’s a slight but perceptible hesitation before Benny says: “not today, no. The matches in the Northwest, they get pretty heated. We’ll take a picnic, make a day of you ruining those poor Frenchmen’s lives.”

Beth laughs because she knows that she’s supposed to, isn’t supposed to be thinking about how Cleo talked about meeting Benny there, drawn inexorably to him and his obsession that wasn’t with her. She’s never managed to sort her feelings about Cleo into anything coherent, and she doesn’t want to think about her now, doesn’t want to wonder if Benny is thinking about her too and what that even means.

“We’re going to the Tuileries,” Benny adds after a moment. “The gravel will fuck up your shoes, but I think you’ll like it anyway.”

The Jardin des Tuileries feels more like a garden than a park, with wide pale walkways and narrower strips of grass and trees. It’s not crowded but there are people everywhere enjoying the mild spring day, walking alone, in groups, in pairs, hands linked. They stop at a small café for cold glass bottles of coke and Benny spreads his leather coat on the grass for them to sit on. Beth tips her head back, lets the sun warm her face, feeling her lips curling into a smile almost of their own accord.

Eventually, Benny produces a miniature travel chess set from one of his coat pockets and they attempt a game of speed chess before realising that it’s much harder to successfully slot the pieces into their little holes quickly and ending up with a mess of rolling pawns. Beth kicks off her shoes and scrunches her toes into the grass and watches as Benny puts together his Dragon Sicilian Defence; she wins anyway, but it’s a close thing, and the next game ends in a draw. It feels like the most casual way that she’s played for years; no clock, no audience, no stakes, no printed pamphlet she’s trying to copy, no mistakes she’s trying to iron out. 

As the afternoon drags on, they pack up and amble until they find a suitable café; they sit outside and watch people walk past and eat enormous croque monsieurs and drink bottles of Perrier. They get a few second glances, but no one stops or tries to approach them and it’s nice to sit mostly anonymous in a foreign city and watch the day saunter by.

“You know,” Beth remarks to Benny, “marriage might not be so terrible after all.”

He leans over, clinks his Perrier bottle to hers. “I’ll drink to that.”

-

The bathroom is a study in art deco monochrome, crisp black and white tiled walls and dark woods around the fixtures and fittings. The floor at least isn’t a chequerboard – that might be a touch too on the nose – covered in white and grey marble, cold against Beth’s bare feet. The mirrors are arched with thick black frames, reflecting a selection of Beths back at her. They spent the day wandering Montmartre, the narrower streets, the buildings with their peeling paint and wooden shutters, the creatives still flocking to the squares and bars and cafes. Some of the graffiti was artistic, some less so, but there was something about the cigarette butts in the gutters and the uneven cobbles on the roads and sidewalks that appealed to Beth, that suited Benny’s pretentious schtick. No one looked twice at them, they could walk and look at the posters pasted to the walls and the artists trying to sell their street scenes to tourists and be anonymous, two people who could be friends or lovers or colleagues or newlyweds, it didn’t matter.

Beth took one of the side tables from the main room, displacing a decorative vase, and brought it in here. Benny’s sprawled across the couch trying to decipher an issue of _Schach_ magazine even though his German is almost non-existent and he’s almost definitely going to fail without Wexler’s usual assistance. Beth unrolls her portable chess set, lays out the board as she starts running the bath, plenty of soap bubbles and hot water. There are stacks of thick white towels piled in a sort of open bureau beneath the over-large sink, the lights glowing in polished silver sconces. 

For the first few minutes Beth just basks in the water; the tub is large enough to envelop her, allowing her to stretch her legs out almost full-length. Steam drifts past her face, curls the ends of her hair, and she soaks out the day, the walking, the cobbles beneath the soles of her shoes. There’s no sound but the occasional slosh from the water if she shifts, opening her eyes at last to the fogged-up mirrors and the hint of condensation on the white ceiling. Foam clings to her skin, parts in places to reveal hints of her knees when she bends her legs, and when the last of the tension slides out of her spine she finally sits up, reaches for one of the towels to dry her hands and forearms.

Beth starts without much of an aim in mind, shifting pieces across the board, pawn taking pawn and lining up each capture neatly on each side. The rim of the bathtub is narrow and curved over, leaving her without a flat surface to lean on properly or to put pieces on, but she doesn’t mind. The board isn’t hard so there’s no click as she makes a move, just the warm fuggy silence in the bathroom. When she checkmates with White, she puts all the pieces back, thinks about what she wants to work through next. She ends up drifting back to the final from the Chicago Open – less than a week ago, but it seems like another life. In a way, it actually was. Beth bites her lip a moment, then leans to start White’s Italian opening. She’s familiar with a lot of the Black defences against the Italian, made sure she practiced several when it became clear that she’d be facing Stirling in the final, but she’s sure there’s a way for White to wriggle back out again of even her most aggressive defences.

There’s been a lot of literature and debate on how to defend against the Two Knights Defence; Beth once watched two players nearly come to blows discussing it in a hotel bar in a city she can’t even name now. It’s not for the meek, it encourages a vicious game of losses and captures that not all players want to step into, but Beth’s always preferred a solid attack to a solid defence. To attack requires a confidence and boldness she was surprised to find that most men didn’t seem to possess, even when faced with an unrated adolescent with an angelic schoolgirl’s face. Half the time they seemed to wince more at her aggression than at their actual loss. Beth has refined herself, learned a wider variation of responses, but her favourite is still to hit and hit hard, no matter the collateral damage. Benny, she’s learned, prefers a slow circling, a quiet set-up and a brutal trap at the end. It’s neat and sometimes gloriously messy – and it hurt like hell when he successfully pulled it off against her – but Beth doesn’t have the patience for it, for carefully adjusting a convoluted strategy if your opponent snatches a key piece.

Stirling tried the Max Lange attack against Beth’s Two Knights but she took it down anyway. She studies the Max Lange as the water starts to cool, condensation beginning to roll in streaks down the mirrors and tiles, shifting variants that give White a better chance to stand up for itself. She’s read so much analysis on the different versions of the Max Lange and has never been convinced into liking it; in the end she abandons the strategy altogether and looks at other options. Beth doesn’t much like playing Italian style, the reliance on the bishop as a hinge across in the board in the middle game, too much lost if it can be captured. Looking to strengthen that position, she moves the White bishop earlier and then develops the White knight; next, she’s supposed to start pushing pawns but she develops the queen instead, moving it into the second rank. She reaches to develop the Black bishop, her original move, but she can already see that despite the strong central position it’s weaker now than it was before. When both sides continue developing, the middle game is already more balanced.

“Benny!” she calls, because something this good needs to be shared. She and Benny have always enjoyed analysing play, their own or other people’s, and he’ll either appreciate this alternative opening or rip a hole in it that she didn’t spot. Sure, she’d prefer him to be impressed, but either way she wants his opinion. 

After a long pause, there’s a soft knock on the door. “Beth…? You okay?”

“I cracked Two Knights without Max Lange,” Beth responds loudly, and the door opens immediately like she suspected that it would.

There’s a sudden rush of cool air into Beth’s warm steamy domain and Benny blinks twice but Beth points at the board and says: “Look!”

Benny pushes the door almost closed behind him so that there’s no more drafts and takes a step or two closer to look at Beth’s board.

“That’s your game against Stirling,” he observes.

His eyes flick to meet Beth’s, back to the board, back to slide over her damp curling hair and flushed cheeks. 

“I don’t think he could have beaten me,” Beth explains, “but there should be something decent to counter the Two Knights, you never know.”

There’s the most subtle of shifts in Benny’s expression; Beth knows his business face, and reaches out to start slowly playing through the sequence she’s figured out.

Benny studies the board, eventually kneeling down on the damp tiles so that he’s on eye level with it. He puts the pieces back to their starting positions and plays through again; Beth moves the Black pieces while he moves the White in her new sequence. It’s not the most thrilling of openings, no early sacrifices or captures, but it also leaves the board more openly matched, no brutal immediate power imbalance. Beth watches Benny’s face, his eyes narrowed with concentration. In public he enjoys making everything look easy, as though every single move anyone has ever played is piled up in neat encyclopaedic files in his head and if you’re very polite he’ll deign to talk to you about them. In private, Beth knows how hard he studies, how many gruelling hours he’s put in over the decades. She’s never cared about impressing the showman side of Benny, perpetually smug and more than a touch condescending; the real prize is watching the corner of his mouth tug upwards, slow, and something spark in his eyes. 

“That is good,” he says slowly. 

“Yeah?” Beth doesn’t need anyone else’s validation, she never has, but it doesn’t mean she isn’t as susceptible to praise as the next person. She knows how sharp Benny’s mind is; it feels good to blow it from time to time.

Benny shakes his head a little, like he knows Beth is asking him to play into her vanity, but his smile is growing. “Yeah.”

His hair is falling into his eyes, the damp in the air flattening it, and in his fading blue jeans and black t-shirt he looks like anyone, any young man sitting on a bathroom floor all lanky pale limbs and a gentle admiration for his brand-new wife. 

Beth shifts in the water and with the splashing there’s a sudden reminder to them both that she’s leaning against the cooling enamel side of the bathtub. Benny’s eyes widen, the soft private expression on his face turning into something neutral, a quick defence mechanism. Beth becomes acutely aware of her bare shoulders and arms, the soap bubbles smeared on her skin, the water dripping from the ends of her hair down her spine. None of it is something Benny hasn’t seen before, hasn’t touched, kissed, coaxed into pleasure – but they don’t do that anymore, they’re better than that and beyond that now. 

“I should leave you to finish your bath,” Benny says, pushing himself to his feet.

There’s still more than enough foam left to needlessly protect Beth’s modesty, and she tells herself not to fold defensive arms across herself; there’s nothing for Benny to see, and it wouldn’t matter if there was. She’s not a child, not afraid of herself or how others look at her. 

“Can you take the board?” she asks instead.

Benny nods, picks up the table and carries it out, not a single chess piece falling. He knocks the door with a hip as he leaves, and Beth shifts back, slides beneath the water. Eyes shut, warmth spread around her, she lies with her head on the bottom of the tub until her breath runs out, until she’s not shifting pawns and the look on Benny’s face against the inside of her eyelids. 

-

Cohabiting in relative peace was never a problem for them – even when they were both living in Benny’s grungy apartment and driving each other mad playing hours of gruelling chess, they got along reasonably well. Now, in a beautifully decorated penthouse far larger than Benny’s basement and with far better plumbing, it’s easy to get along, to slip in and out of each other’s days. Beth continues to take long baths with her chess board and issues of _L’Officiel_ , _Marie Clare_ and _Vogue_ ; her French may not be good enough to read all of the articles but the photos more than speak for themselves. She’s careful only to play casually recreational games, and doesn’t call Benny in again. They read through _Europe Échecs_ , picking out highly-ranked European players and working through the latest winning game reports. Sometimes they take the board and magazine out to cafes, sit for hours in the corner discussing better endgame strategy and which tournaments they might attend later this year, early next. 

“Open up your European file, really kick the Russians,” Benny suggests, while Beth rolls her eyes at his ridiculous use of metaphor.

Beth loses hours shopping, wandering the many floors of Galeries Lafayette, where her reasonable French and the assistants’ periodic English helps her find what she’s looking for, picking out new items to shape her wardrobe to what she’s seen in magazines, on the Parisian streets. Sometimes Benny comes to meet her, although he refuses to help her carry her purchases back to the hotel; sometimes they’ve arranged to meet in a restaurant or a bar when Beth is done. Benny’s usually alone, tucked into a corner or at the bar, squinting down at the battered copy of _L’Etranger_ that fits easily into his coat pocket until he looks up and sees Beth and something in his face clears. Occasionally he’s gathered a crowd around him, grandstanding in French as comfortably as he does in English; Beth teases him later that he dies without constant fawning attention, but privately she thinks that maybe she knows better than anyone the weird magnetic affect Benny Watts has on people.

One night Benny leads Beth through the métro, refusing to tell her where they’re going, and takes Beth past the line outside a fairly nondescript building in an arrondissement several away from any Beth has spent time in so far. Beth is reasonably sure that Benny is not going to get them inside unless he’s got a bribe bigger than the amount of cash he normally carries but stands and watches him talking to the doorman in rapid French she can’t follow anyway. Benny’s told her his grasp of Spanish doesn’t extend much beyond demands and personal insults, and his Russian’s okay but nowhere as good as Beth’s is; his French, however, is comfortable and natural with a lilt that Beth is slowly starting to recognise as Parisian. It’s more attractive than is really fair, frankly.

Benny reaches to grab Beth’s hand and pull her closer, brightly introducing her as _ma femme, Beth_ in a way that she still isn’t entirely used to. The doorman smiles, pulls her in to give her kisses on both cheeks, and waves her and Benny through.

“What dirt do you have on him?” Beth asks, bemused, as they walk down a long hallway.

“Serge lived next door to me and Levertov,” Benny replies. “I keep in touch, he always knows somewhere good to go.”

Despite not looking like much from the street, the club is much larger than Beth expected, a deep underground cavern with coloured ceiling lights cutting the space into strips, a sea of noise and constantly-moving humanity. The music is loud, loud enough to thrum in Beth’s chest and vibrate through her feet, a brand-new heartbeat of its own. Beth’s never been anywhere like this, never sure where to go, too much danger and temptation lurking in the corners. She looks to Benny, who smiles, gently pushes her. “Go on,” he says into her ear, barely audible above the beat, “I’ll find you.”

Beth loses herself in the crowd, in the music and the noise and the people. It’s different to dancing alone in her living room, or in a hotel room with the TV turned up to burn off energy between matches, or in Benny’s apartment with his shitty record collection when he was out getting groceries or smokes. Everyone else is dancing too and Beth moves with them, dances alone, dances with whoever is close to her. The music flows through her, every inch of her, loud and intimate, and when she looks up all she can see are the streaks of colour across the ceiling, flickering and changing with every song. Her mind is full and also empty in a way she’s been trying to reach for years. 

It could have been minutes or hours or years when the girls Beth was dancing with swirl away and Benny appears, pressing a half-full lukewarm bottle of water into Beth’s hands. Beth gulps greedily, suddenly aware of how thirsty she is, how hot she is, her thin dress sticking to her with sweat. Some of the people around them are drinking alcohol, there’s a sticky-sweet scent on the air, but Beth doesn’t want any right now; she doesn’t need this experience to be more intense and she doesn’t want to dull it either, wants to feel every drum beat, every curl of a singer’s voice. Benny takes the bottle away when she’s done, threads off the dancefloor, but is back before Beth can miss him. His narrow hips fit her hands obscenely perfectly when she pulls him in, encouraging him to sway along with her. She’s not expecting much, based on Benny’s terrible taste in music and his preference for secreting himself in dark corners with packs of cards, but when he peels her hands from his body, curls an arm around her back and reels her in again, Beth is surprised enough to stumble, loses the beat for several long seconds before she puts her hands on his shoulders, his hot skin bleeding into her touch.

“You didn’t tell me you could dance,” she shouts accusingly into his ear several songs later, her voice raw.

“There’s a lot of things I haven’t told you about me,” he responds, gives her one of the flirtatious grins he stopped giving her once they’d actually fallen into bed, or maybe he stopped because Beth walked away and didn’t walk back again. Either way, it makes Beth smile, drop her head and look away.

By the time they collapse into a cab back to the hotel, the first hints of dawn are starting to streak the sky. Beth aches all over, a solid good soreness she’ll enjoy soaking in the bathtub later, and she catches enough of a glimpse of herself in the cab’s rear-view mirror to see her mascara running freely down her cheeks, her hair soaked flat. She watches Paris skim past the windows, the mostly-empty streets and still-lit streetlights, a different city but one she trusts more now.

Her ears are ringing and her throat is sore from shouting and singing along; her skin smells of sweat and smoke and other people’s booze, but Beth feels like she’s floating by the time they’re back in their penthouse, warm and homely by now and so, so _quiet_. She kicks off her shoes by the door, spins unsteadily across the carpet on tender feet because she _can_. Somewhere behind her, Benny laughs softly.

“I didn’t think that was your scene,” Beth tells him, a thought that’s been vaguely present all night but wasn’t worth voicing until now.

“It often isn’t,” Benny replies easily, on a casual shrug. “But I knew it would be yours.”

They left the drapes open when they left and the room is full of pre-dawn greyish light, all soft edges and shadows. Benny left the coat and hat and knife behind tonight but his numerous necklaces gleam against his dark shirt, the metal warm against Beth’s fingers when she reaches out to touch.

“Thank you,” she says, quiet, because she’s not had a night that felt that good in a long time, didn’t even know it was possible to _feel_ that good, that full, that bright without resorting to narcotics. 

“You’re welcome,” Benny tells her, and it sounds genuine, no hidden traps or slyness behind the words.

There’s a tautness in the air that Beth knows how to read now, and the smart thing to do would be to take herself to bed, spread her leaden limbs across the soft cool sheets and sleep until she can’t still hear music in her ears somewhere under the tinnitus. Instead, she traces her fingers up to where she can feel Benny’s heart thudding through his chest.

“Sober as a judge,” she says, perhaps less boastful, more marvelling.

“Sober as a judge,” Benny agrees, sounding wry, and Beth isn’t sure who kisses who first.

This isn’t like the clumsy, stricken kiss in her dressing room months ago; Benny kisses Beth with absolute certainty and she kisses back just as fiercely. They danced in sync for hours earlier, a perfect prelude to Benny’s arms around her now, his tongue against hers. She clenches her fists in the damp fabric of his shirt and he’s the one to cup her hips now, hands warm through her thin dress. Beth makes a soft sound into the kiss, one she hopes he can interpret because she’s not ready to form words yet, to make demands or pleas. 

Beth falls into the plush couch and drags Benny with her, an untidy heap of limbs and breathless laughter. He pulls away from her mouth, kisses her jaw and her throat, while Beth claws frantically at his back, her dress sliding higher up her thighs every time they shift. He’s hard against her hip and Beth wants that, wants him, fuck tomorrow’s consequences, fuck the day after’s too. 

“Benny,” she gasps, breathless; one of his legs slips between hers as he braces himself against the couch and she twists, helpless, frantic to be touched. The hand Benny doesn’t have pressed into the pillows by Beth’s head cups one of her breasts and she pushes into it; with her dress and bra in the way there’s not enough contact, the pressure’s all wrong, Beth wants _more_ of it. There’s a zipper somewhere in this dress but she can’t remember where anymore and it doesn’t matter; nothing matters right now as long as Benny doesn’t stop.

He kisses back to her mouth and Beth groans into it, one hand curled in his belt as she tries to pull him closer, the other fisted in his hair, their harsh breathing the only thing she can hear through her muddled ears. She shifts against him, there’s a whisper of friction but it isn’t enough, and Benny murmurs _fuck_ , buries his face in her neck. Beth laughs, bursts of colour behind her eyelids every time she blinks.

“You should have come to Paris with me,” she breathes, giddy on body heat and desire. “Last time, you should have come.”

It takes her a moment to realise that Benny is trying to get away from her, not closer to her, disentangling their limbs and almost falling as he clambers off the couch, off her. She can’t see his face, it’s too dark, and she sits up on her elbows. “Benny?”

“Go to bed, Beth.” His voice is low and rough, cold as she’s ever heard it. 

And then he just walks away, the door to his room slamming behind him.

Beth stays lying on the couch for a moment longer, struggling to compute the abrupt change. Her breath is still catching in her chest, she can still feel how wet her panties are, but now she’s alone in the darkness and she has no idea why.

No. Fuck that.

Benny startles when Beth bangs into his room; the bedside lamp is on and he’s already pulled his shirt off. She can see how peaked his nipples are, whether from her or the chill, how his hair is a mess from her hands.

“What the fuck,” Beth snaps.

He doesn’t look at her, tosses the shirt to one side. “You know I hate maybes,” he says shortly. “No should’ves, no could’ves.”

“Seriously?” Beth demands. “ _That’s_ what this is about? I say that it would have been good to have you in Paris with me before and you have a hissy fit?”

Benny sighs, grabs the packet of smokes from his nightstand, taps out two. He tucks them into his mouth to light them and offers one to Beth. She’s seething but she takes one and he sits down on the edge of his bed.

“I didn’t offer to come to Paris with you because you didn’t want me there,” he says, simple.

“I never said that,” Beth replies.

“You didn’t have to,” Benny replies. “It was your Invitational, your competition; all I did was train you up and send you off. I did my job.”

Something about his hard, level tone riles Beth. “I was _lonely_ ,” she says. “I loved the city but I was alone and tonight… tonight you made me think that maybe it would have felt different if you’d been here.”

“There’s that ‘maybe’ again,” Benny says, his mouth quirking humourlessly. “Well, I have a maybe for you: maybe if I’d come to Paris with you, you wouldn’t have pissed away your match against Borgov for a bottle of pastis and the possibility of a fuck with a French model that you don’t even remember.”

Beth hears herself inhale sharply; she feels cut, like maybe Benny actually hit her, and for a moment she wants to go at him mindlessly, all fists and teeth. 

“How long have you been waiting to throw that at me?” she demands. She’s furious, but her voice comes out as cold and steady as Benny’s. “Have you been holding it since that first phone call?”

“I am not your babysitter, Beth,” Benny tells her. “You can’t take back a move once you’ve made it and you can’t recolour the past to make it sit better. The fact is that you wanted to be in Paris with someone, but whoever it was, it wasn’t me.”

Beth thinks of sitting in that hotel bar with Cleo; thinks of dropping the name _Townes_ like a schoolgirl with a crush. She wonders if that part of the night made it back to Benny too, and if it even matters.

“No,” she agrees, “it wasn’t.”

Benny hangs his head, his hair falling in his eyes. His bare shoulders look too narrow in the lamplight, skinny and vulnerable.

“Own your fuck-ups, Beth,” he says quietly, and he sounds so, so tired. “I signed a lot of paperwork before we got married; I can’t lay a finger on anything that belongs to you. You keep your mistakes to yourself and I’ll keep mine.”

“Well,” Beth says, and she doesn’t know if the ringing in her ears is from the nightclub or the anger, “mistakes were the only thing you had plenty of.”

She slams his bedroom door behind her, and he doesn’t say a thing.

-

Beth wakes up at some stage in the afternoon to find her body attempting to become one with the mattress; she groans and stretches out her limbs across the cool sheets, trying to chase away the stiffness in her muscles. It takes her a long while for the night to trickle back into her consciousness and when it does she resists the urge to put her head under the pillow and hope that it all goes away. Instead, she takes a long hot shower, repeatedly telling herself that she will not catastrophise until she’s had coffee. A lot of coffee.

There’s no sign of Benny when she ventures into the main room, damp hair dripping into the collar of her blouse. She calls for something like breakfast and wonders if Benny’s around; if he’s asleep or hiding in his room or out or… she spins round, a little panicked, and spots Benny’s chess set still on the desk, the Russian book and dictionary open beside it. Okay. Well. Whatever else has happened, Benny wouldn’t leave any of those things behind.

Beth smiles awkwardly at the bellboy who brings her coffee and pastries, thanks him in her careful textbook French, and watches him place the tray down on the coffee table. After a moment’s hesitation, she sits down on the couch, reaches out to pour herself a cup. Outside, rain is lashing the windows, casting the whole room in cool grey light; Beth isn’t cold, but shivers a little as she wraps her hands around the coffee, steam tickling her face. She has options; she has more options than she knows what to do with. 

Room service could bring her wine, could bring her so damn _much_ wine, and Beth thinks about it, listening to the rain fall on a city that isn’t her home. She’d still be mad, still be hurt, but somehow alcohol has always managed to blunt the edges of that, smooth it into something almost bearable. Beth’s been clean for over a year; some days were easier than others, some felt more like she was hanging on by her fingernails, torn skin and shreds, but she did it. If she cracked now, gave in to the half-constant craving, nullified all that hard work; who would she be spiting, really?

Beth reaches for a pastry she doesn’t particularly want to eat, and finally notices that the stack of magazines they’ve been building up on the coffee table is taller than it was, the top issue of _Paris Match_ not the one she flicked through last time. She picks it up; the top edge of the cover has dried crinkled, and the issue of _Plexus_ underneath is similarly damaged. Apparently Benny has been outside today; Beth glances toward his closed bedroom door and decides she’s not ready to risk any of that yet.

Sitting back, Beth flicks through the magazine as she eats, scattering liberal amounts of pastry flakes everywhere. She can decipher the celebrity news better than she can the political news but she’s mostly here for the photographs, as fond of looking at models and actresses in beautiful outfits as she ever was as a teenager. It’s not as potent, but it’s its own kind of escapism. 

Beth’s not expecting it, and something kicks first in her chest and then her stomach when she registers that the candid snaps of a couple in a park in Paris are of her and Benny. They have their own heading – _Les Jeunes Mariés Américains_ – and multiple photographs of the two of them playing chess in the Tuileries. Beth doesn’t remember seeing anyone with a camera, and she’s fairly sure that she’d have found out one way or another if this was pre-arranged; this really does seem to be a serendipitous photoshoot. They look relaxed and happy: Beth with her shoes kicked off and head tipped back as she laughs, Benny lying in the grass at her side, propped up one elbow as he says whatever is putting that expression on Beth’s face. If they’d known they were being photographed, Beth suspects they would have tried to touch more, tried to look more romantic perhaps. But she looks at the page until the pictures feel seared onto her eyelids, and they look entirely natural. Caught up only in each other.

It’s late enough that Beth could call Jolene; she’s probably at work or in class right now, but she might not be. But then what could Beth say – that her fake honeymoon could have been romantic but it isn’t? That there’s a quiet, sharp anger between her and Benny about things they’ve refused to discuss until now? She could get on a plane, go home and think of an excuse when she’s safe in Lexington, but then she’d be admitting to a marriage she couldn’t string on beyond a week, and Beth has never liked failures.

She goes to knock on Benny’s door and risks peeking inside when he doesn’t reply. His bed’s been slept in, the covers screwed into a mess on one side, but he’s not there. His case is, spilling jeans and shirtsleeves, and Beth takes that to mean that at least he intends to return at some point.

Beth turns on the television for background noise and skims the rest of _Paris Match_ , then picks out another of the chess books she brought and slowly starts working through the first chapter, board propped carefully against the sofa cushions as she tries out pawn variations. It occurs to her that Benny knows Paris in a way that she doesn’t, that he could be gone for days if he wanted, and pushes the thought away because it opens up a whole chasm beneath her feet. She puts the lights on as it steadily darkens outside, the rain not letting up, and forces herself to finish the whole chapter before she tosses the book aside.

The hotel has an indoor pool and eventually Beth trails down there. She has the space almost to herself and swims laps until it burns off the worst of the nervous energy, the still-softly-furious energy. Finally, she rolls onto her back and floats with her eyes closed, lets the warm water gently bob her around.

She’s probably rich enough to be considered eccentric and doesn’t really care either way as she takes the elevator back to her room in her robe, barefoot on the cool faux-marble floor, the ends of her hair damp where water seeped beneath her swimming cap. It’s late, but she doesn’t know how late, although she feels a lot less jittery than she did before.

Benny is back, sitting in jeans and a turtleneck near the window, battered copy of Alekhine in the original French cracked open on his thigh. His hair is wetter than hers, slicked from the rain outside.

“I thought you’d be halfway back to the states by now,” he says.

“I thought you’d be playing baccarat in a basement somewhere,” Beth counters, no heat in it. She lays her damp towel over the back of a chair, walks over to sit opposite Benny.

“I nearly did,” Benny replies, lips quirking into something that isn’t a smile. “Stood outside for way longer than was really necessary, but in the end… I came back here instead.”

Beth carefully closes her robe over her bare thighs, screws her toes into the carpet. “You thought you’d find me halfway down my second bottle of wine.”

Benny’s head snaps up. “I told you, Beth, I’m not here to stop you doing anything. Your choices are yours.”

“I know.” Beth watches Benny fidgeting with his rings; first the signet, his usual habit, and then the new wedding ring. She should have taken hers off to go into the pool, but she didn’t. “I thought about it,” she admits. 

“I thought about it too,” Benny tells her, mouth definitely twisting wry now. “They could just have kept bringing us wine, we could surface in a couple of days surrounded by bottles, having fucked up the expensive carpet.”

“You don’t like drinking,” Beth reminds him.

Benny shrugs. “It doesn’t mean I can’t be good at it.” He catches Beth’s eye. “If you want an annulment, it shouldn’t be hard to get. You can say what you want, as long as it doesn’t get me arrested, I won’t contest anything.”

It’s not like Beth’s not been thinking about it; she knows Jolene would help, has probably already got a contingency plan in place. “You’re not a coward, Benny,” she tells him, “and neither am I.”

Beth has refused to take a draw in games when she really should have; she accepted a long time ago that her sense of self-preservation is skewed on and off a chess board. 

“I can’t apologise,” Benny says. “I shouldn’t have said most of that to you, it was never supposed to come out, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t mean it.”

“I know.” Beth chews her lip a moment. “I don’t think I realised that you were still so angry about Paris.”

Benny spreads his hands. “I guess I’m mad that you wasted five weeks of gruelling preparation,” he says. “I don’t let just anybody beat my ego to a bloody pulp on a daily basis, you know.”

“I know,” Beth says quietly.

“The rest of it… isn’t my business,” Benny adds. “If you’d come straight back to New York, well, maybe then it would’ve been, but you didn’t. I really shouldn’t have said anything, Beth, and that I am sorry about.”

Beth has never breathed a word about what might or might not have happened in a Parisian hotel room years ago, not to Jolene, not even to Townes. She doesn’t know what happened between leaving the bar and jolting to consciousness in a bathtub, has never managed to reassemble those fragments. In the end, it doesn’t really matter; what matters is what happened afterwards.

“No wonder most of the chess community think you have some kind of deal with the devil in exchange for gossip,” Beth tells him, because it’s easier than confronting half of what Benny is saying.

Benny smiles, looks rueful. “Cleo told me,” he says. “About a year later. I don’t know if she was boasting or confessing and I don’t think she knew either.”

Something shifts and squirms inside Beth; she hasn’t seen Cleo since an awkward goodbye before Beth fled Paris, too lost and furious to deal with half of the consequences of her actions. She can’t pretend that a small part of her isn’t glad that it’s too late now to even try. It hadn’t occurred to her that Cleo and Benny might still see each other from time to time; she doesn’t know what to do with that piece of information.

“I guess it wasn’t really about me, then,” she says softly.

“Oh, Beth,” Benny says, shaking his head. “It is always, always about you, you should know that by now.”

Beth knots her fingers together in her lap and doesn’t look directly at him; it’s easier to look at the still-damp knees of his jeans, the light flickering on his rings, his bracelet. She thinks, _I can do this if you can_ , shaking hands over Benny’s kitchen table. Beth has never liked being forced to concede anything.

“We should get dinner,” she decides abruptly. “Can you call while I get changed?”

Benny looks at her for a moment, and finally nods. “Sure. Okay.”

Beth concludes that a line has been drawn under something, and goes to fix her hair.

-

With their two weeks disappearing faster than Beth would have expected, they play at being tourists. Benny insists that they go to the Louvre, and Beth protesting that she went last time she visited doesn’t work. They end up wandering for hours, looking at artwork that Beth vaguely remembers from school textbooks, paintings she recognises from bad prints in hotel rooms on the other side of the Atlantic. Alma was the one who liked art, classical music; Beth has always leaned more logical, which is probably just a nice way of saying that chess has always taken priority over everything else. When they were planning that first trip to Paris, years ago now, Alma wanted to spend her days in the Louvre: she rapturously listed all the works she wanted to see, and promised absinthe and gateaux in the evenings. Then she got sick and they couldn’t go, and there was never another chance. The first time she came here Beth was distracted by the tournament, wouldn’t let herself think about that trip that never happened. It’s very different now. 

Benny takes her hand and leads her around the various crowds of tourists chattering in languages Beth understands and languages she doesn’t until they find an empty gallery full of vaguely ugly wooden sculptures from early Medieval Europe. Beth sits on a bench with her knees and ankles together, palms flat on her thighs, and breathes until her eyes clear and she feels less like she could drown; Benny ambles around the displays at a careful distance, a familiar presence in the corner of her eye.

“Come see this one,” he calls eventually, when Beth is starting to feel more herself again. “It’s _hideous_.”

This would not have been what a trip to the Louvre with Alma would have been like; nevertheless, Beth manages to smile as she walks over to see what Benny’s found.

They spend most of a day in the Jardins du Luxembourg, sitting on cool metal chairs and playing chess. The weather stays pleasant, if not especially warm, but that’s the only real difference between this and the days Beth spent in the park in Russia. When they arrive mid-morning it’s mostly the domain of old men who eye Benny suspiciously and Beth doubly so. Benny drops into an empty chair with his usual attitude of a gunslinger entering an unfamiliar bar, tipping up the brim of his hat a little, and Beth takes the seat opposite him with an eyeroll. Some of the men watching her recognise her, she can tell, but that doesn’t mean that she’s automatically won them over.

They lay out the pieces quickly, Benny taking Black and leaving Beth the White.

“Five minutes?” he suggests. They don’t have a clock with them, but Alma’s watch never leaves Beth’s wrist.

“Three,” she counters.

Benny grins, and for a second Beth expects him to name stakes, but all he does is tap his knuckles to the table. “Your move.”

It takes just under two minutes for Beth to hit him with a bishop-rook checkmate, and while she can tell Benny isn’t even trying to play his best, it’s enough for a murmur to break out among the men watching. He exits his chair with a flourish and is immediately replaced by an older man with a permanent cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth who glowers at Beth throughout their relatively short game but shakes hands politely when she’s won. After him come a swift succession of others; they’re not bad, well-practiced and sharp, and there are even a handful of moves Beth hasn’t seen before and makes a mental note to try out back at the hotel later. Benny sits and watches, feet kicked up on a spare chair; Beth spots a couple of people suggest a game to him but he waves them away. 

Later in the afternoon the younger crowd start appearing. By now they’ve had a break for lunch and Beth is playing a simultaneous with two of the best of the park’s regular players, playing White on one board, Black on the other. She’ll win both in the end, but it’s a comfortable challenge and both of her opponents seem happily entertained by it all. The younger players arriving are mostly men but there are a handful of women with them, and Benny seems to know most of them, greeting people with hugs and cheek kisses and bursts of rapid French that nearly distract Beth from her games. When she finally wins there’s a round of applause, and Benny introduces Beth to the two most recent winners of the French Chess Championship. They both definitely know who Beth is and are eager to play her; in the end she beats one and draws with the other, and the two games are drawn out long enough for their growing audience to cheer when each one ends.

Beth plays with one of the women next; she doesn’t get to play against women very often. Certain publications have implied that that is some kind of internalised misogyny or that Beth is simply a straight-up bitch, but the fact is that Beth wants the kind of recognition and success – and, initially, _money_ – that only playing against men can get her. The fact they still segregate tournaments by gender frustrates her and she mentions it publicly when she can: women are clearly just as clever and able as men are at chess. She could always enter one of the women-only competitions, but that feels too much like conceding and Beth thinks she’s done more than enough of that lately.

Fundamentally, there’s not much difference between a match against a woman and a match against a man – it’s the skill of the player that determines it. Beth analyses her opponent’s play style, but she’s played entire games where she’s barely noticed the actual person opposite her, not met their eye until the whole thing was over. Benny says that he watches his rival, learns tics and tells like he does at poker games, but Beth has no interest in that. Still, she hadn’t thought about how often she has to play against a wall of masculine frustration until it’s completely absent.

It’s the longest game of the afternoon, and when Beth finally wins she really feels like she’s achieved something. They shake hands and the woman introduces herself as Claudette, steps to one side to kiss each of Beth’s cheeks with an open friendliness that initially disconcerts Beth and then warms her. Claudette offers her a cigarette which Beth accepts, and they turn their attention to the other games around them. Benny is playing the more recent French champion, saying something softly to him that Beth can’t decipher but which rips startled laughs from their little audience and makes the guy grin at him like he’s hoping to draw blood. They’re apparently still playing for honour and not cash, but there’s a jagged energy to the game that Beth notes has been absent from all the ones she’s played today.

“Ton mari?” Claudette asks as Benny neatly traps and takes a White rook, and Beth nods. Claudette’s mouth twists as she exhales smoke with an innate elegance Beth aches to copy, and rocks her hand from side to side in the universal signal for “not bad”. Beth giggles, and Benny’s eyes momentarily snap from the board to her.

It’s getting dark by the time they leave the park, the temperature dropping enough to feel chilly against Beth’s bare ankles, heading for the welcoming lights of a nearby bistro.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever played there and not left richer,” Benny remarks.

“You could have bet on my games,” Beth points out. “You knew I’d win.”

“I don’t need the spending money,” he shrugs. “Afternoons there were how I used to make my rent.”

Beth considers him for a moment in the twilight. “I never know whether you’re serious when you say things like that.”

“Good,” Benny replies. “That means I’m still doing something right.”

-  
Beth absolutely insisted that the Eiffel Tower was way too touristy, she’s seen it in the distance and that will do, but is somehow not particularly surprised when they find themselves at the Champ de Mars on their last morning. Benny refuses to let them take the elevator to the second floor and by the time they’ve climbed the metal stairs all the way up Beth is about ready to find something to push him off. Luckily they have to take an elevator up to the top; Beth doesn’t think about the fact the elevator is the original Victorian one, still in service after eighty years, and instead works on glaring at Benny all of the way up. He remains remarkably cheerful and Beth wonders if maybe they’ve glared at each other so many times over the years it no longer has an effect anymore.

It’s a beautifully clear day, Paris laid out shining beneath them in the sunlight, even the largest buildings looking tiny. The wind at the top is fierce, everyone gasping and laughing as their clothes and hair fly around, and Beth blinks tears out of her eyes to appreciate the view.

“Happy now?” she asks Benny.

He tips his head. “I’ll let you know.”

Beth looks out over the city, picking out places she can recognise while clinging to the rail. The city looks both larger and smaller than it feels on ground level, rolling out before her in endless rooftops all the way to the horizon.

“Is this what you wanted me to see?” she asks at last. “That Paris is just a city? That I can’t even pick out that hotel where I lost to Borgov once I’m up this high?”

“That is all true,” Benny replies, “but actually, I’ve never been up here either.”

Beth turns to look at him, his wind-ruffled hair and wry smirk. “You _lived here_ for _six months_!”

“Yeah,” Benny agrees, “but I wasn’t a _tourist_. Of course I didn’t come up here. The view’s pretty good though, huh?”

“You’re ridiculous,” Beth tells him, but she’s laughing.

By the time they make it to the ground, Beth has decided that she is never climbing a flight of stairs in any direction ever again, her calves starting to loudly complain. They get sandwiches and coffee outside a nearby café and Beth is surprised to feel a tug in her chest at the thought that she won’t be doing this, this time tomorrow. This is the first true vacation that Beth can remember taking, and she wasn’t sure how she would feel about it; she’s been keeping herself busy to help with the sobriety and was not convinced that she would idle well. There were a lot of variables for this trip; they both knew that it wouldn’t be easy, and of course some of it wasn’t, but more of it worked than she thinks either of them were expecting.

Benny holds up his coffee cup: “To making it through the honeymoon.”

Beth carefully clinks her cup to his, sips her café au lait to their somewhat surprising success.

There is a certain apprehension about their return to America, of course. For all that this marriage is supposed to help Beth corral her life, it has also completely changed it. This time in Paris has allowed her and Benny to at least try and get used to each other, but now they have an apartment to turn into a home, a busy year of tournaments to prepare for, and a united front to keep up for the press. Beth hasn’t been afraid of the future for a long time and she isn’t now, but there’s no harm in acknowledging that she’s a little daunted. She thinks that Benny might be too; he’s uncharacteristically quiet in the cab on the way to the airport, the slight crease between his eyebrows that forms when he’s thinking deepening as they drive.

It’s late when they finally take off, Beth waving off the stewardess’ offer of a drink and trying to smother a yawn behind her hand. Her legs are still sore from earlier, and as she settles herself in her seat Beth realises that she’s actually exhausted.

“Did you make us walk up and down the damn Eiffel Tower so that we’d sleep on the plane?” she asks, unsure if she’s annoyed or impressed.

Benny turns bleary eyes to her, and his usual smirk is a little crooked at the corners. “It worked, didn’t it?” he says. 

Beth thinks about complaining some more but her eyelids are drooping and she thinks she can afford to let him have this one.

-

Sitting in a bright yellow taxi watching the lights of New York pass by the windows reminds Beth a little of the first time she came to this city; Benny had her fate in his hands then too. The thought of that time doesn’t twinge as much as it used to, but she hopes there’s more than an air mattress in a chilly stale basement waiting for her. She tells herself that while she doesn’t necessarily trust Benny’s taste in apartments, Wexler and Levertov seem more like functional human beings capable of picking out somewhere people might actually want to live, and if the worst comes to the worst, her lawyer can probably get her out of the lease once she’s found somewhere better.

They pull up outside a tall dark brick building, criss-crossed with dull metal fire escapes. It’s after midnight by now and most of the windows are dark, but the lobby spills warm golden light onto the street as they get out. Beth doesn’t even have time to reach for her case before the door opens and a jacketed doorman hurries down the short flight of steps.

“Pete!” Benny says, coming to bright life as he does with any flicker of an outside audience.

“Mr Watts, welcome back.” Pete is about a head shorter than Benny, with stocky shoulders and a thick New York accent. They shake hands, and then Benny turns to introduce Beth. She’s still not used to hearing _my wife, Beth_ , and suspects that she’ll possibly never get used to it. 

“Mrs Watts, welcome to your new home,” Pete says, shaking her hand firmly before he grabs for their cases.

Beth hasn’t made a concrete decision about what to do with her last name, assuming that she wouldn’t really have to; she’ll remain Elizabeth Harmon in her professional life, and while she technically _is_ Elizabeth Watts now, she hasn’t actually heard it said aloud yet. They follow Pete inside, and when Beth looks to Benny he looks as startled as she feels. Of course, they’ve been married for two weeks already, but those two weeks were on vacation and in another country. It’s only now, back in America, that Beth feels the ice-cold water of reality crashing back in. She’s married Benny Watts. She’s _Mrs Benny Watts_.

“Beth, please,” she corrects belatedly, once they’re in the clean, pleasantly-sized lobby. This is definitely an improvement on her first arrival in New York, when part of her wondered if this was an elaborate ruse on Benny’s part to murder her and never have to lose a chess title again. 

“Beth.” Pete smiles and nods. “Your German friends came over earlier with groceries for you,” he adds, “and I had them take your post up too. You’ve been getting a lot.”

“It’s all for her,” Benny says cheerfully. “She’s the famous one.”

“A lot of it was for you both,” Pete corrects him with a smile.

Beth swallows down a laugh at Benny’s sudden hunted expression and instead thanks Pete.

“Need anything, I’m here for you, just let me know.” Pete puts their bags in the elevator for them, and wishes them goodnight.

“Well, he’s an improvement over an air mattress and a broken sink,” Beth remarks once the doors close behind them.

“You’re never going to let that go, are you?” Benny asks.

“Probably not, no,” Beth agrees.

Their apartment is full of boxes, way more boxes than Beth remembers packing up in Lexington and way more boxes than she can imagine Benny needing to pack up his meagre belongings. They leave their cases in the hall and squeeze around the piles to get into the living room. It has warm olive-green walls and a thick brown and white carpet that Beth assesses for a moment before deciding she doesn’t hate it, and two large windows that don’t have much of a view but that also don’t overlook an alley full of garbage. Beth is tempted to sink into the comfy-looking darker olive couch, maybe kick off her shoes and prop her feet on the pale-painted coffee table, but she’s got a new home to explore.

The kitchen is shoebox-sized and _very_ orange with a tan fridge and dark countertops, but Beth recognises Benny’s coffee machine already unpacked and plugged in for them, and a knight-shaped magnet is holding an _Enjoy!_ note to the fridge. Their friends have brought coffee, sugar and cream; orange juice, bread, eggs, crackers, butter and several packets of M&Ms. Beth would roll her eyes, but this is about the level of nutrition available at any given time in her home or Benny’s; they might want to work on that sometime.

She leaves Benny making coffee and goes to look at the rest of their apartment. The bathroom is decorated in teal, the tiles and the paintwork the exact same shade, but the tub is an enormous white cast iron affair that Beth can’t wait to try out, and the large oval mirror above the sink reflects Beth’s flushed cheeks and messy hair back to her. Both bedrooms are roughly the same size with a queen-sized bed and closet in each; one has wallpaper in various shades of lilac that turns out to be decorated with hundreds of tiny flowers when Beth gets closer, and the other has geometric wallpaper in shades of green and brown. 

“I guess I’m getting the floral one,” Beth says, when Benny appears with a mug of coffee for her; she recognises the mug as one of the ones from his old apartment and decides she needs to get on with unpacking her stuff as soon as possible.

Benny shrugs. “I won’t notice it after a while,” he says, and Beth believes him.

They go back to the living room, and this time Beth spots a literal sack of mail that she didn’t notice earlier next to a comfy-looking armchair. They should probably both try and get their beds ready, try to sleep and get themselves used to American time again, but after sleeping most of the way home Beth feels way too awake to even attempt to rest. Instead, she and Benny spend their first night in their apartment sitting on their living room floor sorting through piles of envelopes. Any addressed solely to Beth go to one side for dealing with later, but a lot of them are addressed to them both; in the end they split the pile into stacks and start opening.

Most of the envelopes turn out to contain cards congratulating them on their wedding. Benny’s social circle might be wider than Beth’s, but she’s pretty sure he owes money to most of it, and there’s no way that even between them they know this many people. 

“Is this that guy you made cry in Pittsburgh?” Benny asks, waving a card at Beth. She squints at the name inside, scrawled in slightly smudged ballpoint, and can’t conjure up a face to go with it. Not that it really matters.

“I thought _you_ made that guy cry in Pittsburgh,” she replies at last, dropping the card onto the growing pile in front of them. The cards themselves are pretty interchangeable: pastels, flowers, generic illustrations of couples that don’t look like either of them. The messages inside are equally generic and only about three names have sounded familiar so far; Beth is beginning to suspect that half of these are from the people who harassed her into getting married in the first place, which strikes a sour note. She sips her cold coffee and tears into another envelope.

“God, we sound nearly respectable,” Benny mourns a while later. “Who the hell are ‘Benjamin and Elizabeth’?”

“They sound terrible,” Beth agrees.

“I’d say I need to engineer some kind of scandal,” Benny says, “but I’m pretty sure one of the billion pieces of paper your lawyer made me sign promised that I wouldn’t do that.”

“That’s what you get for inviting yourself into my life,” Beth responds primly, swiftly chucking aside a card that expresses a wish for them to know the joy of children as soon as possible. 

“I’ve always had a fondness for loopholes,” Benny muses. “We’ll work something out.”

-

Over the next few days, in between a lot of weirdly-timed naps to combat the jetlag, Beth tackles the boxes. The three containing clothing, shoes and accessories are easy to deal with: she spends a morning transferring things into her new closet and bureau, unpacking fresh towels and bedlinen. She’s happy to live with the décor already existing in the apartment – it’s neither old-fashioned nor obnoxious – and hasn’t brought anything with her. It’s a home, but it’s not a home yet, and maybe it never will be. She sets a photograph of Alma in a neat silver frame on top of the bureau beside a small jewellery box, and tells herself that she’ll get used to the wallpaper in time.

The boxes Benny’s responsible for are much more battered and badly-taped than Beth’s, and she assumes he’s dealing with them in some way because periodically there are less of them. His record player appears in the living room and the kitchen cabinets start filling up with a meagre selection of implements, all of which probably need replacing. Sipping coffee out of another chipped mug, Beth thinks she finally realises why proper married couples get bought presents to set up their homes. She has no desire for fancy table linen or the kind of wedding china that neither of them will ever take out of the cupboards until it inevitably gets smashed, but they could probably use a few normal things.

The telephone gets connected and starts almost immediately ringing off the hook: people call for both of them and it takes a little bit of getting used to, remembering that she’s not the sole resident. The Chess Federation calls to talk to Benny, but they apparently have no interest in talking to her. Beth grits her teeth because it’s always been an uphill struggle with them, but she is _trying_ , dammit. She tells Jolene about Paris and listens to a dozen micro-aggressions from law school, being able to call her friends a relief from when she occasionally remembers she knows all of about five people in New York on a good day. Benny avoids answering the phone most of the time, and Beth gets very good at _no hablo español_ when she picks up to a presumably pissed-off Argentinian.

Downward spiral of a year notwithstanding, Beth generally runs on early nights and earlier mornings. Admittedly, some of those early nights were achieved with the aid of medication, but it’s easier to sleep when she’s been busy, and there never seems to be time for idleness. Separately and together, Beth and Benny explore their new neighbourhood, finding bars and coffee shops, a tiny second-hand book store crammed almost floor to ceiling with paperbacks, restaurants with delicious smells that spill onto the sidewalks, furniture stores Beth resolutely won’t go into because they don’t _need_ anything, shop windows full of an eclectic range of clothes, half of which Beth immediately covets. Benny finds a bodega where they can get cigarettes and groceries, chats to the owner in his semi-accurate Spanish. There’s a park a few blocks away with swings for children and plenty of benches, and tables where at the weekend people sit and play cards and dice and chess too. 

The main problem turns out to be their library. Between the two of them, Beth and Benny have a deeply comprehensive collection of chess books, magazines and pamphlets in a variety of languages, several of which neither of them actually understand. They have double copies of about half of the books, what with Beth having brought everything from Kentucky, but neither of them are going to give away or sell the extra editions. They fill the bookcases immediately, and shortly after that every flat surface in the apartment starts gaining stacks of reading material. Beth puts the newer books she hasn’t read yet on her nightstand until the pile threatens to get unwieldy and fall on her while she sleeps, walks into the living room one morning to find a heap of tournament pamphlets six inches thick on top of the television, Benny’s back issues of _Shakhmatny Bulletin_ underneath the coffee table. She considers moving them, and then realises she has nowhere to move them to.

Pete the doorman proves invaluable, helping Beth keep track of the weird amount of post she still receives – just _how_ did everyone get her new address, she wonders – and always able to recommend a store or a place to try as they attempt to pull the apartment together. Sometimes Benny is out and sometimes he isn’t, but it’s nice to walk into the lobby and see a friendly face; Beth had forgotten what that was like, living without Alma in their house in Lexington. Pete helps Beth carry groceries and one time an enormous rug for Benny’s room up to their apartment, and is always happy to answer her questions about the area, about New York in general.

Beth had time off from the show for the wedding and her honeymoon, but soon she’s back to filming – it turns out it’s all a lot easier now that she actually lives in the same city as the recording studio. There’s a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of champagne in her dressing room; Beth picks it up when she’s alone, cradles the cool glass and imagines popping the cork, filling her mouth with the sharp fizz. She could record the show with no problems, she might even play better, bold and risky, bright-eyed, sparkling like the alcohol. But she’d go home to this fragile new life that they’re building and Benny’s mouth would thin and tomorrow she’d just want more and the day after that more _again_ , an aching void that’s never enough no matter how much you pour into it. She puts the bottle down, makes conversation with the hair and make-up women about where to go for her next trim, grins dazzlingly when the audience applaud and cheer to congratulate her on her recent wedding. 

The camera focuses on her hands, beautifully manicured as always, and Beth looks down and sees the light glance off the new gold band, nearly fumbles a capture but manages to steady herself. It’s just that she’s not used to playing with jewellery; she always knew that it would be an issue. Of course it’s disconcerting, but she’ll get used to it. She has to.

Beth gets home late and gives the champagne to Pete, carries the flowers upstairs to discover that they don’t own anything like a vase anywhere in the apartment. She and Benny rummage around and eventually unearth a pitcher that neither of them remembers owning and that nearly tips over when they fill it with the expensive bouquet; they put it on the coffee table on top of Benny’s German dictionary with its peeling cover, and the whole thing is easily the most adult part of their new home.

If Beth hadn’t seen Benny asleep on a couple of occasions she’d be becoming increasingly suspicious; he stays up later than she does, far more fond of the early hours of the morning than Beth has ever been, the light in his bedroom staying on long after Beth had retired to the airbed. He’s also almost always awake when Beth wakes up, the two of them taking it in turns to get into the shower first, though at least hot water here isn’t an issue like it was in his basement apartment. He doesn’t disappear off to all-night card games the way that he did when Beth was living with him years ago, apparently staying on the straight and narrow as long as Beth does, the _other_ marriage vow they’ve never really spoken about. Still, Benny flits in and out of their apartment, his presence sometimes announced only by the trail of empty coffee cups and yet more chess books appearing in growing piles on their living room floor, and Beth starts contemplating demanding: _just when do you fucking_ sleep, _Benny?_ because it’s turning into a bit of a weird conundrum.

The trophies end up being a sticking point. Beth left most of hers at home in Lexington but she brought a few with her, admittedly mostly to annoy Benny, and he has two boxes full of his. They lack a fancy cabinet to display them in and everything is already covered in their chess library; Beth puts a couple of the smaller ones on top of her bureau and Benny uses some of his as bookends, but they clearly need to put up some shelves or something. 

“I won this one before you were even born,” Benny remarks cheerfully, holding up a cup that, if Beth’s math is correct, he won at the age of seven. 

Beth responds by bringing out her first place trophy for winning in Russia, something Benny hasn’t won before _or_ after her, and putting it on top of the television.

When she gets up the next morning, Benny has put every single one of his trophies on the coffee table, piling books to create a pyramid base to display them on. He has more of them than Beth does, simply because he’s been playing for nearly twenty-three years to her six. She glowers at them, reading the events and the years engraved on them; lingers on the 1966 co-champion trophy for a moment. Its counterpart is in Lexington, hidden among other wins that don’t still taste sour when she thinks back on them.

Beth may not have as many trophies as Benny, but she’s still got a reasonable amount with her, enough to scatter them obnoxiously around the apartment. She adds some of them to Benny’s coffee table extravaganza, displacing some of his bigger cups to replace them with hers, uses his enormous Russian dictionary to put her Russian trophy topmost. Benny catches her just after she’s finished this, face screwing up like he’s annoyed but still trying not to laugh.

“Truce?” he suggests.

“You’re only saying that because you don’t _have_ the Russian first place trophy,” Beth responds. Benny has a third place one, which is perfectly respectable and the best any American players had done lately until Beth swept along, but it’s an easy spot to needle.

“I don’t _yet_ ,” he corrects her, falling easily into their couch. Most of Benny’s pillows didn’t come with him, or at least Beth hasn’t seen them if they did, but the black and white one that looks like a chess board has; he leans against it as he looks at Beth. “I do have last year’s Cincinnati trophy though.”

Beth makes a face at him even though there’s no sting to it now, sits down beside him to look at the mess of shiny cups and statuettes and shields haphazardly piled up on books, and, yeah, they’ll probably need to do something about this.

“Did you ever drink champagne out of any of yours?” Benny asks. Beth looks askance at him to see if there’s some kind of trap in his words but it seems to be a genuine question.

“No,” she admits. “I threw up in one once, though.”

“ _Nice_.” Benny winces.

Beth thinks about the question, the tone in his voice. “Did you ever drink champagne out of yours?”

“I did.” Benny closes one eye, squints at the selection in front of them. “I won, and ended up drinking a magnum of champagne out of…. that one.”

Beth follows his pointing finger, leans to pick up the cup he’s pointing to. It’s a decent size, and there’s a weird residue inside it that _could_ once have been champagne. Then she looks at the date.

“It says here you were twelve.”

“I was,” Benny agrees.

Beth eyes him. “An entire magnum?”

“I was sick as a dog,” Benny says ruefully. “Although not into my trophy, so I win that one.”

It hadn’t occurred to Beth that Benny was ever someone who didn’t stop after one beer, or two at the most; she’s never really asked what his childhood was like, outside of the occasional discussion about old games. He was very young in a world full of adults for a long time, after all.

She opens her mouth but despite the wry nostalgia on Benny’s face she can see he’s not in the right mood to answer questions; she files it away as something to work on later.

They’re not ready for a real housewarming party, but Levertov and Wexler come over with pizzas and soda when the last of the boxes have been unpacked. 

“Wow,” Wexler says dryly, looking around, “you’ve taken that nice apartment we found you and turned it back into Benny’s crazy basement.”

“At least I vacuum occasionally,” Beth offers, and goes to find glasses while the boys shift the coffee table and its current tableau to one side, to make enough room to lay out chess boards on the rug. 

“We could play Twister,” Levertov suggests idly. “I bet you still have that board somewhere, Benny.”

“You cannot play Twister if you’re sober and you don’t intend to sleep with anyone you’re playing with,” Benny replies firmly. 

Levertov tips his head in acknowledgement while Wexler just smirks. “Have I mentioned recently how much I appreciate your deeply weird marriage?”

They end up playing bughouse. Since you need four players it’s not something Beth has much experience with, but she catches on quickly; they play two games simultaneously with the normal chess rules, but any pieces captured on one board are put into play on the other. They set up the clocks with five minutes on each and keep swapping teams between games. Everything quickly descends into chaos, the clicking of clocks and pieces a frenetic rhythm, teammates demanding the extra pieces that they want – at one point Wexler does a ludicrous queen sacrifice in order to provide Beth with an extra queen on her board, while Benny does his best to clog up the other board with pawn captures. Beth and Levertov prove to be the best pairing, able to work in a way that’s almost coordinated, but they don’t keep real score and by the time the boys go home Beth aches from laughter, sitting on the carpet with Benny separating the two sets into their original boxes. 

Getting ready for bed, Beth drops her toothbrush into the holder and looks at Benny’s toothbrush beside it, at his razors next to her face cream in the mirror cabinet, and for the first time it doesn’t feel strange.

-

They head out before it’s fully light, stumbling around the apartment drinking bad coffee and shrugging into sweaters and jeans, neither of them fully capable of speech yet. Beth turns the car radio right up in the hope it’ll stop Benny nodding off and driving them off the road, though the New York streets are pretty crowded even at this unholy time. It would probably have been easier to fly to Kentucky, but they need the car once they’re there and Beth’s not yet reached the point of wanting to keep an unused car with her unused house in case she drops in on a whim and doesn’t want to keep calling for cabs. Benny offered to drive while Beth flew, but something stubborn flared in her and so here they are, exchanging yawns on a trip that’ll take the day.

In fairness, Beth and Benny are good travelling partners – she’d realised that from their first journey together. Familiarity has only made their silences more comfortable, and by the time the sun has fully risen and they’ve both coalesced into actual sentences Beth’s enjoying herself, winding down the window to fill the little car with spring breeze. Simon and Garfunkel beg Cecelia not to leave and Benny is even moved to tap the song’s beat on the steering wheel as they sing along. He owns way too many jazz records for someone who Beth has to actually live with, but at least he lets her pick the radio stations for roadtrips.

Later, Beth opens the latest _Shakhmatny Bulletin_ – fortuitously arrived in time for this trip – and while her spoken Russian is far better than her grasp of Cyrillic, she’s more than capable of reading the game reports aloud. Benny listens attentively, occasionally interjecting his opinions on certain moves, and after one particular match report they play the game through again, tweaking most of the moves that end up giving White a slicker, more definitive win than the original players did. They eat lunch by the side of the road, lukewarm sodas and sandwiches. Beth gets out to stretch her legs and ends up dancing to The Ides Of March on the radio, the horn section of _Vehicle_ proving impossible to resist, even crackling through a speaker in need of repair by the side of Route 48 on the fringes of West Virginia. The occasional car passes by and Beth wonders what they see, the slender figure dancing by the faded Beetle while her black-clad companion refuses to join in but smiles anyway.

When fatigue starts to set in over the course of the long afternoon, Benny teaches Beth how to swear at someone in every South American country he’s ever visited: “Sure, you can just call someone an asshole in Spanish, but I think it’s a nice touch to know the local insults, really get under their skin”. 

“Is this why the Argentinians have stopped calling you?” Beth asks.

“I might turn up anyway,” Benny replies. “Really give the fuckers something to cry about.”

Whether he’s referring to the Argentinian Chess Federation, some specific players, or just the entirety of Argentina is unclear, and Beth doesn’t ask; knowing Benny, it’s all of the above.

They arrive about seven in the evening, and Beth looks at her house and remembers the last time they were here together, six months and what feels like a lifetime ago. Benny was an unknown quantity then and in many ways still is; it feels more real, bringing him back here as her husband, than any amount of cohabitation in New York could.

Jolene said she drove over a couple of days ago and plugged the fridge back in, checked the lights and phone were working, and left the dust to be Beth’s problem. The house looks the same as it always does, her home, a fortress and a prison in perhaps equal measure though Beth doesn’t know how to fully articulate the thought and doesn’t try. 

Benny hangs up his hat and coat as he walks in with the same casual ease that he always has, toes off his shoes and follows Beth up the stairs.

“I see I had to marry you to warrant the spare room,” he says, amused, and Beth warns: “I can still make you sleep on the couch.”

The spare room is a deliberately neutral space, stripped of its pink tartan and gauzy bed hangings; the furniture is much the same, the white paint freshened up, while Beth decorated it in shade of soft blue. It felt like removing so much of her adolescence, but she couldn’t have left it as it was, a memorial to a truncated childhood that was never hers to keep. She’s especially glad she redecorated as she watches Benny throw himself across the bed, all stretching lanky limbs; for a moment she nearly sits beside him, chooses to perch on the desk chair instead.

“This was yours, wasn’t it?” he says after a moment.

“It was,” Beth agrees carefully.

“All your carefully plotted victories and your teenage dreams,” Benny muses. He has a smile ticking his mouth but Beth can’t tell if he’s teasing her or not. “All the things this room has seen.”

“I thought a lot about murdering you in here,” Beth tells him.

As she suspected it would, Benny’s face lights up. “Tell me everything,” he orders, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “This was after Vegas, right?”

“It was,” Beth confirms. “Well, my favourite one involved you losing spectacularly to me, you playing absolutely shambolically.”

“Of course,” Benny agrees. 

“You’d still be reeling from your awful loss when I cut your throat with your own knife,” Beth continues. “You bled to death all over the chessboard that was still laid out with my victory.”

It made perfect sense to her at seventeen; saying it aloud now, it comes across pretty brutal. Benny looks delighted.

“ _Dark_ ,” he says cheerfully. “I like it, that’s exactly the kind of enmity I try to inspire.” He lies back down again, looking up at the blank ceiling where Beth watched chess pieces glide for _years_. “That explains a lot about the Ohio Open.”

“I didn’t want to kill you so much by then,” Beth replies. “Well. It depends on how obnoxious you’re being at any given time.” 

Benny grins with all of his teeth, wolfish and yet in its own way oddly charming. “If you could tell that kid what you know now, huh?”

Beth wouldn’t know how to explain to her teenaged self half of the things that have happened over the last couple of years; this doesn’t even feel like the worst of it.

-

The usher directs Beth and Benny to the groom’s side of the church without even asking; Beth doesn’t know if this is because he recognises her or if one look at Benny’s glittering chains and open-collared shirt is enough to say he doesn’t belong to Susan’s friends. Mike’s half of the congregation is full of a certain type of man; Beth has beaten at least half of them at local competitions, she realises, though at least most of them smile at her when they realise who she is. The small church is decorated with bouquets of white and pink spring flowers, and at the front Beth can see Matt with his hands on his brother’s shoulders, speaking intently. The twins both look handsome in their smart suits with matching white flower buttonholes, and a pang of something fond and maybe a little nostalgic runs through Beth. 

Susan’s visibly proud father walks her down the aisle as they all rise clumsily to their feet. She looks radiant, golden hair pinned up with a soft lace veil falling around her shoulders, in a short embroidered dress and a bouquet of daisies twice the size that Beth’s was. Her three bridesmaids, two of them little girls who are clearly relatives, are in pale pink silk. Throughout their vows, Mike and Susan only have eyes for each other, unable to stop smiling even at the serious parts, while in the front Mike’s mother and Susan’s mother weep through the whole thing. Even from halfway back in the church, Beth can see Matt swallowing hard as he hands over the rings. It’s a lovely ceremony: simple and affectionate.

The reception is in Susan’s parents’ backyard, decorated with more flowers and paper lanterns. It’s a perfect spring afternoon, warm sunshine and small fluffy clouds: you couldn’t ask for better weather. There are buffet tables; half the women in the family disappear into the kitchen and reappear with platters of sandwiches, bowls of salads, and Beth briefly wonders if she should have brought something before remembering that the best she’d be able to provide would be store-bought cookies. Instead, she places the carefully-wrapped set of cocktail glasses with the rest of the wedding presents and goes to find a glass of apple juice instead of the sparkling cider everyone else is drinking.

When Mike and Susan have fed each other pieces of cake and laughed for dozens of photographs, there are speeches: Matt’s best man speech is half-teasing, half-fond, but he’s clearly uncomplicatedly happy for his brother. Susan’s father gives a short, sweet speech and when he finishes has to dab at his eyes, affectionately hugging his daughter. It’s like a wedding on television, Beth thinks, an immaculate textbook example.

Later, she finds Harry looking a touch uncomfortable in his suit, and June, pink-cheeked and smiling in powder blue. They chat and it’s nearly easy; Beth answers some of June’s questions about Paris, Harry talks about work, they discuss how nice the day has been. In a weird flash of clarity, Beth wonders if she’s the only person left who’s still awkward about this, who can still see Harry’s devastated face before he walked out when she blinks. She lets Harry take June off to dance when there’s a break in conversation and drifts away, wandering alone through this party full of happy people.

There’s a pretty good band playing most of the classics and a few newer songs; the singer looks a little like Buddy Holly if you tilt your head and squint. Benny is sat in a lawn chair somewhere with a handful of the other chess players, good-naturedly arguing over problems and the calibre of players at the next Mexican Open. Beth could join in, but she still hasn’t worked out how to slot herself in when Benny is holding court the way that he does; he’d make room for her, but she doesn’t know what to do with it once she has it. Instead, she kicks off her shoes and lets Matt take her onto the improvised dancefloor for _I’m A Believer_ and _Twist and Shout_. 

“Is your mom pressuring you to be next?” she asks, when the music switches to something crooning originally by Sinatra and they’re watching Mike and Susan sway, eyes only for each other. 

“Of course,” he shrugs. “But I’m happy as a bachelor for the foreseeable future.” He eyes Beth thoughtfully. “How’s a month of married life treated you?”

“It’s very much like my life before, except now there’s a line for the shower in the morning,” Beth replies, to make him smile.

Part of Beth would like Benny to join her, to dance with her to _Louie, Louie_ in the growing twilight with that ease he hides under all his angles and edges, but she remembers how that ended, tries _not_ to remember how that ended. Their marriage is a piece of paper and two slender rings, not whatever makes Mike’s eyes track Susan whenever she walks away, like he can’t believe how lucky he is, a dreaming man who hopes he never wakes up. Instead, she dances with several of her previous chess opponents, dances with Susan’s friends – a friendly mass of interchangeable pastel dresses and identical mascara – enjoys the music and spring evening.

The band strikes up a familiar beat and something within Beth snaps; she walks off the dancefloor, stumbling a little as she pushes her feet back into her shoes, goes into the house in search of the bathroom. It’s a small room with overwhelming sepia floral wallpaper, and Beth locks herself in and sinks down to the linoleum. Even from inside the house she can hear the party continuing, the chatter of the guests, and the song thrumming over everything.

_You give me fever when you kiss me, fever when you hold me tight._

When Beth breathes she can remember turning up the radio deliberately until the music tickled her spine, dancing because she wanted to, dancing because she wanted Harry to watch her do it. She wasn’t sure yet what she wanted from him, but when he was around she didn’t have to think about Alma being gone, about how the house seemed enormous, terrifyingly empty; didn’t have to think about anything but the way Harry looked at her, half-scared, half-wanting. It made Beth feel good, that look, lit her up inside, gave her something to think about that wasn’t raging grief. She felt like more than just an overgrown schoolgirl, beaten by arrogant assholes like Benny Watts and implacable Russians like Borgov. He was something she could have, something attainable, and while she didn’t know if she wanted him or what she was really supposed to _do_ with him she so desperately wanted to have something.

It was cruel, in its own way; Beth knew what Harry wanted from her and knew that she could never give it to him, would never give it to him. It was probable that she didn’t even have what he wanted in the first place, but she managed to keep him from realising this for long enough to strip the smile from his eyes; a long, drawn-out game that he didn’t realise he’d lost until every last part of Beth’s trap surrounded him, toppled his king and his ego and his heart. She knew what she was doing, but couldn’t seem to stop herself, because if Harry left then she’d be alone in the house again, just her and Alma’s immaculate patterned wallpaper to talk to.

And now it’s years later and outside Harry dances with a lovely girl who likes him for who he is and not just for the space that he fills, and he doesn’t look at Beth the way that he used to, and when she hears the soft snap of _Fever_ Beth is seventeen again, wanting to try being like other girls, desperately scared of being alone.

Maybe Susan’s mother is highly-strung; she did cry through most of the wedding. Beth begins a methodical search of the bathroom cabinets, heart pounding in her ears. They’re tidy and organised, full of all the things you’d want, but nothing in the way of a prescription for relaxation. Beth keeps looking, frantic now, accidentally knocking a packet of Q-Tips into the sink, spilling talcum powder across a shelf. Leaving white fingerprints behind her, she rummages through packets of pills, but they’re just painkillers, regular aspirin. For a second she considers taking one or two anyway, and then wonders if maybe she’s looking in the wrong place. Everyone is outside, distracted; surely it wouldn’t take that long to check the bedroom, the nightstands, the dressing table. Not everyone keeps all their medicines in the bathroom.

There’s a knock at the door and Beth freezes, caught. “Occupied,” she calls quickly.

“Beth.” It’s Benny’s voice, low and steady. 

Beth looks at the incriminating mess she’s made, wonders if she has time to try and-

“Open the door.”

Sometimes, it’s about knowing when to concede. Beth unlocks the door and lets Benny in. He looks at her, at the talc she’s somehow smeared across her peach dress, the Q-Tips scattered in the sink, the stack of abandoned medicine bottles on the countertop.

“I want to go home,” Beth says, before he can open his mouth.

Benny looks at the mess for another long moment and then nods. Beth starts trying to tidy and he reaches out to stop her: “they’ll just think it was the kids, come on.”

The drive home is about an hour, and they don’t talk; Beth hugs her knees to her chest and watches the houses pass by in the growing darkness, not sure what to do with the weight in her chest, the sore thudding edges of her feelings. It’s not an entirely unfamiliar emotion, but Beth had gotten used to pouring alcohol and pills on top of it until it stopped or at the very least backed off, chagrined. Now it feels bigger than her, suffocating and ugly, and Beth digs her nails into her legs to give herself something to cling to.

“Are you going to bed?” Benny asks when they get back and Beth heads straight upstairs.

“No,” she calls back, goes into her room to strip out of her dress, wash her face. Looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, she wonders if she’s still that lost seventeen-year-old, peering out from the same eyes.

Some kind of piano music starts up downstairs; Beth doesn’t recognise it, but presumably Benny has turned on the radio to fill up the silence. After considering it, she puts on a pair of dark blue pyjamas, adds an oversized cardigan on top, and goes to see what’s happening.

She’s not expecting to see Benny sitting at the piano, a crease flickering between his eyebrows as he plays. He’s not as good as Alma, but Beth can see that whatever piece he’s working through is complicated, something old and classical she’s never been interested enough to know about. She hesitates on the stairs for a moment and then comes to join him, leaning on the piano lid alongside a selection of her trophies and watching Benny’s fingers dance across the keys, rings shining in the light of the sole lamp he’s put on.

After a minute or so, Benny hits a wrong note; he screws up his face as he tries out a couple of keys until he finds the note he’s looking for and carries on, but not long after that he stops abruptly.

“You can keep going,” Beth offers.

“I can’t,” he replies, “I never learned any further.”

She hadn’t noticed the absence of sheet music, hadn’t realised he was playing from memory, but the expression on Benny’s face makes sense now; it’s the one he wears when he’s pulling up a set of memorised plays, when he’s visualising something that he already knows. Beth doesn’t want to sink into the cliché of _I didn’t know that you played the piano_ because of course she didn’t; she tips her head expectantly and waits.

“Five years of lessons,” Benny explains. “My parents thought it might help their little prodigy keep his fingers strong and flexible.” He raises his hands, wiggles them. “I think they hoped I might turn out to be a musical genius and they’d have two talents for the price of one, but I hated it.”

There’s a touch of bitterness in his words, and Beth realises that that’s what his playing was missing: he had all the right notes in the right order, but there was no heart there, no feeling. Alma played everything because she loved it, the music flowing through her. Benny plays by rote, and that’s all it is.

He shifts over a little and Beth sits beside him on the piano stool. “Are you going to teach me to play Chopsticks?” she asks.

“No,” Benny replies, “we’re not having a _Seven Year Itch_ moment.”

“That’s a shame,” Beth says, running a fingertip across the keys for a light discordant jangle. “Someone should be playing Grandmother June’s piano.”

“‘Grandmother June’?” Benny echoes.

Beth shrugs. “I guess she was Alma’s grandmother, which makes her my… something.” She never did ask for clarification on so many things; she always just assumed that there would be more time. And then there wasn’t.

Benny picks out the first line of a Beach Boys song with one finger in the sudden silence. Beth tries to find something to say and fails.

“Was that it?” Benny asks at last. “There were grandparents at the wedding today. And parents. And cousins. A whole church of well-wishers.”

Beth thinks about it, but even in her imagination she can’t people a congregation with a family she doesn’t have.

“No,” she says, voice barely audible. 

“It was a lovely wedding,” Benny carries on, tone too neutral. “Damn near perfect, if that’s your kind of thing.”

Beth was a teenager in this house and even with the new décor and furnishings, for a moment she’s back again, too old and too young all at once, watching the gap between herself and her peers widen even when she makes vague attempts to bridge it. The things they want are alien to her and the more she examines herself, tries to make herself want them too, the worse it feels.

“I don’t want it,” she bursts out. “I didn’t want any of it.”

She’s not crying, not really, but her eyes are wet and her voice is cracking a little anyway.

“That doesn’t make you a monster,” Benny tells her. “Your mind doesn’t work like other people’s and you don’t have to want what they want.”

It was a beautiful wedding, a perfect day, and Beth didn’t know what to do with it. She can’t picture herself in Susan’s place, not even in the wildest of fantasies; her friends are happy, and Beth has never felt further away from them. She played house with Harry for weeks, flirting back and forth with what he wanted, what she told herself she was supposed to want, what she was too afraid to admit that she actually wanted. She couldn’t sustain that, couldn’t fake wanting it, and she still can’t. Apparently a loveless wedding rushed through in a courthouse to keep the press off her back was still better for Beth than something like today would have been, and she still doesn’t know how to think about that, to balance the person she is with the person she thinks she ought to be.

At some point while she was thinking Benny put his arms around her, and Beth keeps her face in his shoulder where it’s dark and quiet, more comforted than she should be considering how skinny he is, all bones and sinews. 

“For what it’s worth, I didn’t want it either,” Benny says quietly, his voice a low rumble she can hear through his chest. 

Beth sniffs. “That’s because you only like chess and antagonising people.” 

“Touché,” Benny responds; she feels his huffed half-laugh against her hair. His hand is warm around her upper arm. “So you won’t get married to a nice guy with a steady job and dance in your ballgown in someone’s backyard while your father pretends he isn’t crying into his cake. You can’t make yourself want what you don’t want and you don’t have to beat yourself up about it. Be happy for them because they’re getting what they want, and one day you’ll have what you want and they’ll be happy for you.”

Beth considers this, face buried in Benny’s washed-soft shirt, breathing in his familiar cologne. She should probably have pulled away by now, but she can’t make herself move. “What if I don’t know what I want?” she mumbles, soft enough that she can pretend she didn’t say it.

“You want to be world champion by the time you’re twenty-five,” Benny replies immediately. “Everyone and everything comes second to that, but it’s not something you have to be upset about.”

Beth finally sits up, lets Benny’s touch fall away. It isn’t cold, but she feels it anyway. He’s mellow by lamplight, the careful, kind expression on his face that he hides in public.

“Maybe you’d be happier if you were less smart, but you’ll never know,” he tells her. “You aren’t normal, so don’t tell yourself that you want to settle for normality. It doesn’t suit you.”

Beth drags together a half-smile. “Is that what you told yourself?”

“We’re not like other people, Beth,” Benny shrugs. “It doesn’t make life easy but I’m not sad about it.”

He smiles, one of those tight, rueful ones he gives when he thinks he’s said more than he wanted to, and Beth wonders vaguely when she learned that about him, when his every facial expression became a language that she can read fluently. Her husband, who sits in her home and plays the piano she inherited better than most people ever will, and hates every note of it. Who doesn’t ask Beth to dilute herself so that he can keep up.

“No,” Benny says softly at whatever he sees in Beth’s expression. “I know I’m at the bottom of a long list of bad decisions you want to make tonight and regret tomorrow, but I’m cutting you off.”

He presses a gentle kiss to Beth’s temple before he gets up and disappears upstairs; the bathroom door bangs shut. Beth sits alone at Grandmother June’s piano, poking gently at the keys, a dozen wrong notes.

-

Jolene has been practicing her squash and Beth has not; by the time they finish playing Beth is multiple points behind and has bruised her left knee diving and failing to return the ball, but she feels better, like she might have exorcised something. She ignores the people waiting for the court and lies down on the cool wooden floor, letting out a slow groan. 

“That’s what you get for prancing off around Europe and not practicing your rich white people games,” Jolene tells her, but offers Beth a hand to her feet anyway.

They shower and head out for a late lunch. They’ve had a bunch of phone calls over the last month but Beth is so relieved to see her in person, a real, solid bastion of sanity. Jolene looks a little tired from classes but she’s energised too, telling Beth about what she’s learned lately and what she plans to do with it. She speaks with a certainty that always startles Beth, who knows where she wants to go but seems to find herself on the most stumbling, winding path to getting there. It never occurred to her that while she was lying awake at Methuen shifting game pieces across the ceiling, Jolene was lying alongside her constructing a real plan.

“You talk to Benny yet?” Jolene asks while they’re considering dessert.

Beth doesn’t need to ask about what; in between rallies she breathlessly filled Jolene on the wedding reception, on being fine one minute and the next being completely lost.

“No,” Beth admits. She knows Benny was still awake when she finally went to bed because she could see the strip of light under his door; when Jolene came to pick her up Benny was lounging across the couch in one of his stupid floral robes with the radio loudly tuned to the local jazz station that Beth hates. He told her to have a good time and went back to frowning at the newer edition of _Practical Chess Endings_. Beth left him behind with slight misgivings, though she doesn’t know why; Benny’s been in her house before, she’s reasonably certain she’ll return to it in the condition it was when she left, and she knows better than anyone that even if he snoops there’s nothing for him to find. And yet she feels a sense of disquiet, knowing that he’s in her carefully constructed home without her.

“You had to leave your friend’s wedding reception because you were searching their new in-laws’ home for drugs,” Jolene tells her, gentle but unflinching. 

“I know,” Beth says, looking at the bubbles in her soda water so she doesn’t have to look at Jolene. “I fucked up.”

“Actually, you only tried to fuck up,” Jolene corrects her. She props her chin on her hands and Beth can feel her waiting until she reluctantly raises her eyes to meet Jolene’s. “You know what your problem is?”

“An addictive personality?” Beth suggests, quick and facetious. 

“Kind of,” Jolene says. “Most of your life, Beth, every time you felt something you didn’t like, you dumped booze or drugs on it, or you shut it in a box and thought about chess until it went away.” Beth opens her mouth to protest and Jolene just raises her eyebrows. “You know you did. Now you’ve come out of that shell and you’ve got all this new skin and every emotion hurts because you don’t know how to feel things a normal amount.”

“So you’re saying I should go back on the tranquillisers?” Beth says, because her heart is beating harder than she’d like and Jolene’s expression is kind but firm and difficult to look at.

“I’m _saying_ , smart-ass, that it’ll get easier with practice.” Jolene lets a little teasing smirk run across her mouth. “Like squash.”

“That’s just mean,” Beth replies.

“You have to lose at things sometimes, it keeps you bearable,” Jolene tells her cheerfully. 

Beth makes a face at her, then lets her head drop into her hands. “I don’t want to practice this,” she says quietly. 

“Nobody does, honey,” Jolene says. “But you hang in there, and in the end, you turn around and you’ve made it and then it’s not so bad after all.”

“How did you do it?” Beth asks, because there’s something in Jolene’s expression. 

Jolene smiles, wry. “Me? It’s a stereotype, but mostly anger. Anger made me want more, and made me fight for it, and kept me going when I thought I couldn’t. Anger keeps me working hard in my classes so I can beat every last smug white boy who wants to learn the law just so he can manipulate it to keep him and his friends rich. I don’t need it so much to survive anymore, but I know it’s still there if I do.”

Beth remembers being angry but these days she thinks she can only summon up some kind of exhausted frustration. Maybe that’s what Jolene means about practicing.

“I should get mad?”

Jolene shrugs. “You should get _something_. Your brain’s been trying to eat itself since we were kids, but you don’t have to make it easy for it.”

Beth thinks about this. “I think Benny was trying to tell me something similar.”

“He’s got a pretty sharp mind under that terrible personality he’s constructed for himself,” Jolene muses.

“That was nearly a compliment,” Beth says.

“Well, you’ve been married a month and you haven’t had to kill him yet,” Jolene replies. “He’s nearly worthy of one.”

Jolene orders them both coffee and pie before Beth can claim that she doesn’t want any, and changes the subject with comfortable ease while they eat. Some part of Beth is still feeling a little stung, a little blindsided but the pie is good and Jolene’s smile is gentle, strung with that simple faith that she has in Beth, has always had in Beth. Sometimes Beth still isn’t sure what she’s done to deserve it, but she’s grateful. 

Eventually, Beth thinks to ask about Rick; Jolene tends to be circumspect when she talks about him, but she has a smile that she only wears when she talks about him. How Jolene manages part-time work, law school and a relationship is beyond Beth, who has only ever gotten the hang of being really good at chess and even that she nearly destroyed, but she’s glad to see Jolene so sure and so happy.

“How’s his divorce going?” Beth asks.

Jolene shrugs. “Fits and starts. But I don’t mind, I’m not looking to settle down anytime soon.” She arches an eyebrow at Beth. “I don’t have half the country’s bored white housewives demanding I get hitched, I’m not in a hurry.”

“Right.” Beth nods and concentrates on her pie.

“You don’t want to ask about what happens if he never gets divorced,” Jolene says bluntly, and Beth looks at her in surprise. “I know. I’m not stupid. And if that’s how it shakes out, that’s how it shakes out.”

“That’s… very pragmatic,” Beth says. She can hear how careful her tone is. “I thought you loved him?”

“There’s love and there’s love,” Jolene replies, and it’s one of those moments where Beth feels the distance and the years between them, when they formed into people miles apart. “One day, when you’ve been in love, you’ll know.”

“I’ve been in love!” Beth protests.

Jolene eyes her thoughtfully. “Oh, what the hell, we’ve already ripped off one emotional band-aid today. No, Beth, you haven’t. You carried around a schoolgirl crush for years – and I don’t blame you, Townes is perfect. He looks good, he smells good, he dresses good, he’s rich and smart and way too charming.” 

Beth says nothing; something in her chest is stinging.

“Best of all,” Jolene carries on, quieter, “he was unavailable. You knew you couldn’t have him, and that made him safe. You keep longing for something that’ll never happen, and you never have to deal with the kind of man who could want you back. It’s smart.”

Beth bites the inside of her lower lip until she’s sure she’s not going to scream something she doesn’t mean or burst into tears in the middle of the restaurant.

“Two emotional band-aids,” she manages at last, “ _and_ you beat me at squash.”

Jolene reaches across the table to squeeze her hand. “I bought you pie, though.”

“You did,” Beth allows.

They shrug into their jackets, head out into the cooling late afternoon. “Let’s get you home to your cowboy before he burns your house down,” Jolene tells her, and Beth doesn’t want to but she manages to smile anyway.

-

After another early start, Beth ends up falling asleep for most of West Virginia. She’s still feeling a little unsettled after lunch with Jolene, a whole host of thoughts she doesn’t want to examine buzzing around her head. This is probably part of the problem Jolene was talking about, though realising this hasn’t made Beth feel any better, or any more equipped to handle her emotions. Losing a few hours of the journey to a blank slumber is better than any of the alternatives.

Beth wakes up slowly, unsure where she is for a couple of long minutes until her brain catches onto the radio, playing so softly it’s almost inaudible alongside the sound of the engine. Something plaintive with sharp harmonised female voices, and Beth stiffly untucks herself from where she’s been curled in the passenger seat. As she pushes herself upright she’s aware of something falling off her, and after a second realises that she’s been sleeping under Benny’s coat. She doesn’t remember tucking it around herself, but then she doesn’t remember much after they set off in the greyish dawn light.

“Oh good,” Benny says, glancing at her. “I was starting to get irrevocably bored.”

Beth reaches for the radio and turns up the volume to help clear the last of the sleep from her mind; it’s The Supremes, she realises, singing angrily: _you don’t really love me, you just keep me hanging on_.

“I-Spy?” Benny suggests dryly.

“You can’t be that bored,” Beth replies.

“I really can,” he says. “I’ve been playing chess with myself, but for some weird reason I keep winning.”

“Probably a fluke,” Beth tells him.

“Well, I started out playing against you, but there’s only so much a man’s ego can take before noon,” Benny replies easily.

“That’s not my fault,” Beth shrugs, prim.

Benny laughs. “Sometimes, you even slit my throat with my own knife after you’ve won.”

Beth turns to glare at him. “I _knew_ I shouldn’t have told you that!”

“It’s my favourite thing you’ve ever said to me,” Benny tells her. “A compliment of the _highest_ order.”

“Hey,” Beth protests, “I was nice about your hair once.”

Benny turns his head to give her a look. “And we both know how poorly that ended.”

Despite the fact that they’re married now, Beth’s not sure how she’s supposed to talk about those weeks in Benny’s apartment; maybe if she could work out how she felt about them, it might be easier.

“It could’ve been worse,” she offers at last.

Benny half-laughs. “Well, I did swear to myself I wouldn’t let you do to me what you did to Beltik.”

Beth doesn’t want to rise to the bait, but it does make something else occur to her. “How do you _always_ know everything about everyone?” she asks. “Matt told me half your gossip is mine by law now, which means I get to know what your secret is.”

Benny’s silent for a minute, and when Beth looks at him he’s got that crease back between his eyebrows. 

“I don’t have a secret,” he says at last. “I look, and I listen, and I extrapolate. You do it too, but you’re not as good at it as I am because you’ve not been doing it as long and you’re not interested in people.”

Beth frowns. “Maybe all your money disappears on a private detective.”

“ _Please_ ,” Benny says. “Anyone with half a brain knew Beltik was obsessed with you after you took his title, and then he blew his college money on fixing his teeth? Then he suddenly drops out of chess without a backward look, and you arrive in Ohio all studied up and ready to go. Two and two make four, Beth.”

Beth considers this. “You’re bluffing. That’s… that’s just guesswork.”

“Everything is guesswork,” Benny shrugs. “But hone your guesses enough and they end up looking like the truth.”

“You know that sounds like bullshit, right?”

“I’ll prove it to you.” Benny darts a look at her. “You won’t like it, so I’ll just remind you that it’s a long, long walk back to New York from here.”

Beth makes the face at him that she always makes when he’s deliberately being superior, and he reaches to turn off the radio.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s say you want to retain your title at the US Open. You stand a good chance, but the person you need to beat is this girl who’s come out of goddamn nowhere in the last couple of years and just wiped the floor with everyone. She’s a tiger, she guides the noose around her opponent’s neck and then kicks their legs out from under them, no hope. It’s impressive, but you need her not to do it to you.”

Beth very carefully says nothing, shows nothing on her face, but her chest is filling with ice.

“She’s unhappy about something,” Benny carries on. “She’s hiding it well, but there’s a drop in her shoulders when she thinks no one’s looking and her victories aren’t hitting like they should. It’s in her face if you know where to look. Which is interesting, sure, but it’s not enough to throw off her game, and that’s what you need. So then you look to what you know about her. Which isn’t much, yet: she learned chess in her goddamn orphanage basement with the janitor – but that means a lot of it’s natural talent. They’re calling her an instinctive player, and she’s young, and she’s very very good, which means she doesn’t study as hard as she could. So then you think about when you met her in Cincinnati, this gawky schoolkid who knew she didn’t fit in but wanted to, wanted people to know that she knew just as much as them.”

“You said you didn’t remember meeting me in Cincinnati,” Beth says, quiet and sharp.

Benny ignores her. “You could probably draw with her, but a draw means that she wins and you lose. You need something definitive. What you need to do is make the girl angry, make her absolutely fixated on beating you, so focused on her attack that she won’t notice your defence until she crashes into it. And you need to make her think the whole thing is her idea, so she can’t claim that you tried to influence her. It’s her pride you need to wound, so you look back through her games, and you find a weakness. There’s always a weakness; very few people ever play a perfect game, especially not when they first start out. And she was so fresh to competitive chess when she beat Beltik, she probably hasn’t studied that game in any great depth. So you find it, the error, right where you thought it would be.

“You organise meeting her so it looks casual, and you make sure she believes you’ve forgotten meeting her before. Firstly, because that’s a little needle in anyone’s pride, and secondly, because then you definitely wouldn’t have remembered that she so sincerely wants to prove both her worth and her superiority. And you throw the error to her in the easy spirit of camaraderie. It’s a gamble, because maybe she knows about it; but then if she knew about it she would almost definitely not have let _Life_ print it up as an example of her best work. So you pull the pin on the grenade and you hand it to her and you leave.”

There’s no sound in the car but the engine chewing up the miles. At some point, Beth realises that she folded her arms over her chest, defensive, and she can feel her nails digging into her upper arms. What was that Jolene said about anger? What she feels is so hot and spiky and overwhelming that it physically _hurts_.

“What you’re telling me is that you cheated,” she says.

“Did I?” Benny’s looking at the road, not at her. “I didn’t tell you to double my fucking pawns, I didn’t already upset you so bad that the next time some asshole took a swipe at your ego you overdid the revenge. What I did was tip the odds in my favour.”

“You _bastard_ ,” Beth hisses, because it’s that or burst into furious tears.

“Yeah,” Benny agrees. “I wound you up and I watched you go and then I swept in and took the spoils. But you know what? No one ever did that to you again. You learned.”

Beth scoffs. “Are you asking me to thank you for what you did?”

“What? No.” Benny makes a brief annoyed face at her. “What I _did_ was make a teenage girl cry over a boardgame in front of a whole room of adult men. It was cruel and it was shitty, and yes, I would do it again.”

Benny’s right: it is a long, long walk back to New York from here. It’s a long drive, though, and Beth is seething with something raw and betrayed.

“In a perfect world,” he says, “chess would just be a meeting of two minds in an empty room with nothing but the board between them. But players are people, and people are messy. Sometimes people make mistakes because they aren’t good enough, but mostly people make mistakes because they didn’t sleep last night, or they’re going through a divorce, or they’re hungover, or their bank account has three dollars in it, or they’re in a new place with a whole lot of new faces in it and they’re just plain scared. You’re one of the best because you can play through most of that emotion, but you’re not a machine. You’ll probably be a better player once you really accept that.”

Beth stays looking out of the window so she doesn’t have to look at him. “You said once that we think alike, but you’re wrong. I would _never_ -”

“There’s at least one Soviet teenager who proves that you would,” Benny interrupts. “Or did you fluster that poor kid into making a mistake for some other reason?”

There are a lot of reasons that Beth doesn’t like to think of Mexico very often; Alma is only one of them. She sinks her teeth into her lower lip.

“You read people through the board,” Benny tells her. “I read the board through people. That’s the only real difference between us. I gather information, and I read body language, and I sift through rumours for the grain of something plausible, and then I know which set of imperfections I’m playing against. After that, it’s just chess.”

Beth doesn’t want to be mollified, or to understand where Benny’s coming from: she can feel the sting of something burrowing into her, taking up long-term residence. “Is that how you play cards?” she asks eventually.

“No,” Benny says, “I cheat at cards.” Beth is startled into looking at him in spite of herself; he gives a little shrug. “I count cards. It’s not difficult.”

“Shouldn’t you win… more often?”

“Ah.” Benny twists his mouth ruefully. “Well, it’s an imperfect system, particularly once people realise that that’s what you’re doing.”

They drive on in silence for a while longer, until Beth gives in and turns the radio back on. She’s got a lot to think about, most of it against her will, and she hates the quiet unapologetic figure Benny makes, tapping fingers against the steering wheel in her peripheral vision. It was years ago, and Beth took the title from him the first chance she got, definitively and brutally, and she remembers their game in Ohio and she wasn’t driven by the slightest bit of revenge. Benny sat across from her with his hat and his coat and his knife and his mannerisms and she wasn’t thinking about him at all until they shook hands across the board after she’d won. She refuses to acknowledge that she learned a lesson or five in Vegas, or that anything Benny did because he’s fundamentally an asshole could have helped her at all.

It’s dark when they get back to New York, and even after sleeping for hours of the trip Beth feels exhausted. Benny kills the engine and they sit there for a moment. Beth can see the light on in the lobby, so close and yet so far.

“If I can forgive you, you can forgive me,” Benny says.

His face is cut into shadows; she can see the tight twist of his mouth but not his eyes.

“Forgive me for what?” she asks.

Benny laughs; there’s no humour in it. “Jesus, Beth.” He huffs a sigh. “I wanted to give you everything and instead you chose to take every bottle of liquor Kentucky could offer you.” He shakes his head. “I guess at least you proved I had a heart to break; I’d always wondered.”

Beth can’t breathe. All she has to do is reach for the door and stumble into the street and she doesn’t have to sit here, in this dark car, with Benny’s wry quiet voice slicing straight through her. 

“Maybe you broke my heart too,” she blurts, desperate to shift focus. Thinking about reaching out to Benny and him hanging up on her, his voice so angry and, now that she thinks about it, hurt.

Benny reaches into the backseat, grabs his duffel.

“No,” he says, “I didn’t.”

The car door slams behind him.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The more eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that the expected number of chapters has moved from 4 to 5, basically because I... keep writing words, I guess, even with a detailed plan this story just keeps getting longer! Sorry, I guess.


	4. if i were you, i'd pay my dues before i lose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued grateful thanks for ideas and betaing to [trobairitz22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trobairitz22/profile) and [finkpishnets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/finkpishnets/profile), and extra thanks to [HumiliatedRook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HumiliatedRook/profile) for doing all the regular betaing AND being my chess consultant ("I need a game where this happens, what can you suggest?").

The busy hum of conversation stops as soon as Beth and Benny walk in.

Beth has gotten increasingly used to this over the years, though she’s never completely at ease with it. Benny just takes it as his due, striding into the space with his usual grin. A few men get up from the chess boards in front of them, leaning to shake his hand or casually embrace him, but Beth is aware that the rest of the room’s attention is still on her. She doesn’t have an entire public persona like Benny does, barely a slightly thicker skin she can pull on when faced with armies of the press, and she tries a smile. Benny told her he was taking her to his favourite chess club tonight and Beth agreed, partly out of genuine curiosity, partly because they’re trying slightly too hard to get along right now, oddly courteous toward each other in a way that they’ve never been. She’s not sure what she was expecting, but it wasn’t this little building tucked away between a hardware store and an Italian restaurant, white-painted brick walls and a record player in the corner burbling away. 

After a minute, Benny turns back to Beth, eyes lit the way that they only ever are with an audience, and holds out his hand to her.

“And can I introduce my wife, Beth Harmon?”

Beth does her best to smile and catch names as most of the people in the room – the majority men, but more women than she was expecting – start introducing themselves, shaking her hand, a waterfall of sound she can’t hope to peel apart. 

“All right, that’s enough.” A voice cuts over everything else, and the little group part to allow a tall woman to stand in front of Beth.

“Beth Harmon, Christine Tyler.” Benny does the introductions, and Beth shakes the firm hand offered to her. Christine has long greying hair, thick eyeliner and a loose deep yellow kaftan; she gives the air of being an aging hippie, but her pale blue eyes are eagle sharp, and in any case, Beth recognises the name.

“The US Women’s Champion from Sixty-One to Sixty-Five,” Beth says, adding: “it’s lovely to meet you.”

Christine smiles. “You prepped her well, Benny.”

Beth glances at Benny to see that he’s looking pleased with himself, or maybe the situation. “I didn’t even mention you, that’s all Beth.”

Christine is studying Beth, and Beth wishes she was more… something. She’s in simple black slacks and a dark red sweater, comfortable and ordinary, but she recognises the desire to seem more impressive from a dozen other rooms, gazes skimming over her, people thinking that a pretty face meant there was little underneath.

“Get your wife something to drink, Benny,” Christine orders. “Her coffee is on the house; yours is not.”

Benny scoffs but Christine is already putting a friendly arm around Beth’s shoulders, leading her over to a corner table with a board set up on it. The two tables nearest it are empty, and Beth is aware of the buzz of activity building back up behind her, people returning to their games, chatting as they do so. She assumed that all chess clubs were very serious, utter silence over matches unless people were debating the best way to play a move, but there’s a more relaxed atmosphere here. 

“Welcome to my chess club,” Christine tells her once they’re seated, leaning back in her chair and watching Beth with those disconcerting eyes. 

“This is yours?” Beth asks, looking around the space with new appreciation. It looks more like a coffee shop than a stuffy parlour or one of the more exclusive houses that she knows contain the long-established clubs. Benny’s a member of the Manhattan Chess Club and Beth knows she could join any in the city that she wanted; she has yet to work out exactly _what_ she wants.

“I got tired of competitive chess,” Christine replies, her voice light and calm. Beth thinks that she must look shocked, because Christine laughs. “The extreme focus, the politics, the gender divide… in the end it just made me tired and I couldn’t enjoy myself anymore. But I never lost my love for the game, so I started this club instead.”

Beth thinks about the breaks she took from playing: the first, when she spent most days drunk and guilty and lost, and the second, when she fought for sobriety every day and tried to work out what she wanted from her life. Both times, she returned to competing, unable to resist the spotlight or the adrenaline or the way that victory feels – one of those, anyway.

“I see,” she says.

“No,” Christine says, smiling, “you don’t. But I never had your ruthlessness or your drive, and I made it as far as I think I could go.”

“You never wanted to see if you could be the overall champion?” Beth can’t help asking.

Christine’s smile turns a little wry. “I think I admire your ability to walk into those rooms full of men knowing how they’re looking at you and how they’re thinking about you more than I admire your playing,” she says. “The Federation – hell, the _world_ – views women’s chess as lesser, weaker, but I’ve never thought of it that way. Maybe I could have beaten the men, and I play against them all the time now, but I still prefer a game refreshingly free of a man’s ego.”

Beth fails to bite down something like a grin. “I think I do too.”

“But you married me anyway,” Benny says, appearing with a cup of coffee, placing it at Beth’s elbow with a flourish. To Christine, he gives a cup of what appears to be some kind of herbal tea; the smell is strong and complicated.

“You and your ego have Boston to prepare for,” Christine tells Benny, shaking her head.

“Yes ma’am,” Benny responds with an ironic salute, and returns to the other tables, sliding into an empty chair opposite a skinny Black guy whose expression says that he knows Benny of old.

“I don’t know if I’m more impressed by your victory against Borgov or the fact you got Benjamin Watts to settle down,” Christine remarks lightly.

Beth nearly knocks her coffee over. “I think ‘settle down’ is a relative term,” she says quickly.

The corner of Christine’s mouth lifts. “I’ve known that boy for years,” she replies, “and he was practically feral when I first met him. You might make a man out of him yet, if you wanted to.”

Unsure what to do with any of that, Beth offers: “well, there’s a lot of raw material.”

They play a game, Beth taking White, Christine taking Black. It’s a casual game, no stakes, no tension, though they use a clock with twenty minutes on it for time control. Beth finds herself enjoying the gentle chatter of different voices around them, the constant clicking of pieces and clocks, the idle conversation between herself and Christine that starts and stops between various moves. She’s not really used to talking much while playing unless she and Benny are antagonising each other, but she finds she doesn’t mind as much in this cosy little club, doesn’t even mind the endless warbling of The Doors’ _Light My Fire_ from the record player the way that she does when Benny is playing it for the fifth time in a row on any given afternoon. 

Even like this, getting to know each other on a random May evening with nothing to gain and nothing to prove, Beth can appreciate how good a player Christine is. She’s read some of Christine’s games in the past – women’s chess is not reported as well as men’s is, but Beth has always been more interested in the game than in other people’s petty opinions of it – but they’re nothing compared to watching the woman work. Beth gets entirely caught up in the game, letting the noise around her filter through one ear and out of the other apart from the occasional sharp crack of Benny’s laughter, no louder than anything else in here but something she’s oddly attuned to nowadays. By the time their clocks run down, Christine has constructed a beautiful net around Beth’s king, and despite the twinge she always gets at a loss, she’s too impressed to mind too much.

They hit a draw on their rematch, and after that Christine is called over to mediate an argument over a problem that Beth doesn’t care about but suspects Wexler would enjoy, and she takes the chance to get herself some more coffee and meet a few more members of the club. The informality is a bit of a contrast to the competitions she normally plays, but she likes it, it reminds her a little of the evening Benny first invited his friends over and drilled her in speed chess until every move was second nature. That night was a catalyst for a lot of things, many of which Beth hasn’t clarified in her mind yet, but it was fun, and she finds herself craving _fun_ nowadays, looking for something to fill up the spaces inside herself that isn’t harmful in the long run.

On the subway on the way back to the apartment they don’t really talk, but things don’t feel as taut as they have this past week. Beth predicted disaster when they first arrived back from Kentucky, but it turns out that it is completely possible to live in an apartment with a man you have married who has pissed you off and who you hurt worse in the past than you knew, and still get on perfectly well. It’s been eerily polite and while conversation is always periodic and patchy between them there’s been more silence than speech over the last few days, but none of it particularly uncomfortable for all that. The courteousness and occasional small talk were more like Beth would have expected if she’d actually taken Jolene’s advice and married a stranger, treading carefully around each other like they don’t know any better.

Of course, the reality is that they know each other far too well now, so well that Beth doesn’t know what to do about it: the things that Benny has on her that she can’t get back, the pieces of Benny that she carries, all of it too honest and too emotional and too awful to really contemplate. Somehow, she’d thought that getting married would freeze things in place, that mostly-friendship they can largely maintain would become their natural state, and that would be that. It didn’t occur to her that things would shift, for better or for worse, and now they’re both paying some kind of price for her naïveté.

It must be said, though, that politely living with a stranger is boring as all hell.

“Okay,” Benny says when they get back to the apartment, hat and coat hung up, shoes kicked off, “I know what we have to do.”

Beth eyes him suspiciously as he walks into the living room, pushes the coffee table across the rug until it’s under the windows and there’s some space on the floor. They finally have some shelving and weirdly the apartment seems bigger for it, now most of their books and trophies have stopped cluttering up every empty space available. Benny strips off his overshirt and chucks it onto the couch, stretches out his neck. Beth raises her eyebrows but stays silent.

“I never did teach you how to punch someone,” Benny explains. “Roll your sleeves up, kid.”

“You’re… giving me permission to punch you,” Beth says slowly.

Benny screws his face up. “Not exactly, but one of these days you might want to, and besides, the next asshole that grabs you definitely deserves a broken nose.”

For a second, Beth has no idea what he’s talking about; then she remembers Albert Stone, the way he made her skin want to crawl off her body, the bruised wrist that hurt for days afterwards no matter how she tried to ignore it. She’s never told Benny what happened, but apparently he read between the lines neatly enough. He has a habit of doing that.

“Okay,” she says slowly.

Benny nods, business-like, and Beth wonders if she’s about to get a lecture on the glories of a decent punch the way Benny likes to give lectures on the glories of chess, but instead he gestures at her. “Fists up.”

Beth is still distinctly dubious about this whole enterprise but she does as she’s told, raising them to roughly chest height.

“No,” Benny shakes his head. “Thumb on the outside or you’ll break your hand.”

Beth obeys, adjusting her grip; Benny watches carefully, wearing that expression he has when they’re playing chess and he’s working out her strategy. When he’s happy with her, he forms a fist of his own, shows Beth how to align her wrist with her forearm, forming a straight line from elbow to knuckle. He demonstrates this by skimming a fingertip along the path; Beth’s skin does not prickle. It doesn’t.

“This is more detailed than I was expecting,” she admits, looking up from her arm to Benny’s face. “How many punches have you been throwing?”

“C’mon, Beth,” he says easily, allowing a hint of a smile to flit across his face, “half my strategy is to piss off every person in any room I walk into.”

“That’s a strategy?” Beth asks. “I thought that was just you.”

He scoffs at her, then takes a step back. “Tuck your chin in, fists level with your cheeks. Good. No, bring your elbows in, you want to keep them close to protect your ribs.”

Benny’s skinny as a rake, especially in just his black t-shirt, but he’s got a surprising amount of strength in his arms; Beth knows this for a number of reasons but she’s never thought about them in this context, watching the muscles in his forearms bunch as he demonstrates the stance for her. She swallows.

“Isn’t this what your knife is for?” she asks.

“You don’t carry a knife unless you intend to use it,” Benny says shortly, something shuttering in his expression. Beth drops her stance and opens her mouth but he shakes his head: “no, the police will not be banging the door down, fists back up. Okay, good. Now, plant your right foot behind you. No, knees bent, you need to get your strength from this.”

Beth tries but isn’t entirely surprised when Benny puts his hands on her hips to direct her, adjust her posture. He’s never touched her for this purpose before, but as usual they fit together well, and Beth can’t tell if he lingers for a moment too long or not before he steps back, a couple of feet between them.

“Right,” he says, “you’re ready.”

“I’m not going to punch you,” Beth tells him, because while it’s often tempting to take the smirk off Benny’s face, she’s not sure she actually wants to do it now she’s here.

“You’re not,” Benny agrees, “but we’re going to follow it through.”

He instructs her to aim for something behind him so she doesn’t pull the punch too soon; not to clench her arm but to squeeze her hand a little, to aim to strike with the knuckles of her index and middle fingers but not the fingers themselves. Beth tries it out a couple of times slowly so Benny can watch the way that she moves, instructs her to draw strength from her stance and not just her arm, to snap her shoulder back after she lands the blow in case she needs to do it again.

Beth has a lot of questions and can tell that Benny isn’t going to answer any of them.

“Okay,” he says when he’s happy, raising a palm, “let’s try this a bit faster.”

“…you’re not worried I’ll break your hand before Boston?” Beth asks.

“Ideally no one’s hands are breaking tonight,” Benny replies, “c’mon. Don’t say you’ve not been dreaming about this since we’ve met.”

“I’ve mostly been wanting to kick you in the crotch,” Beth corrects him.

“You should probably use your knee,” Benny says cheerfully, “but you’ll forgive me if we _don’t_ practice that. Now. Throw that punch.”

It’s a lot to remember, all of it unfamiliar to her muscles, but Beth concentrates on doing what Benny’s said and is pleasantly surprised when her knuckles successfully strike his palm, the smack of skin meeting skin ringing through the room. Benny sucks in a breath through his teeth and shakes his hand out, but he’s smiling with it.

“Good,” he says. “One more.”

Beth is not convinced she should but he holds his hand up again and she lands another solid punch, the impact running up her arm as she pulls her shoulder back, watches Benny flex his fingers.

“Aim for the guy’s nose,” he advises, “there’s less chance of you cutting your knuckles open on his teeth.”

He falls into the couch, looking pleased with himself. After a brief consideration, Beth sits down beside him.

“You don’t want to regale me with tales of your many victories?” she asks.

Benny screws up his face. “They’re all fucking inglorious,” he admits, “but I kept my face pretty and walked away okay, and that’s all I want for you.”

It hasn’t felt like this between them since that stupid car ride back from the wedding, and Beth is startled by how relieved she feels, watching Benny watch her.

“Why would you ask me to marry you if you hate me now?” she finds herself asking, no finesse to it, just a thought she’s been turning over from a dozen angles all week, unable to voice it.

The crease appears between Benny’s eyebrows. “I don’t hate you,” he says. “There was a time when I thought you were a brat who chewed people up and spat them out when you’d gotten what you wanted, and there was a time when I didn’t like you very much, but then I remembered that we’re the best players in this damn country. We’re too alike and we’ll never be able to get away from each other, but maybe when we’ve finished sorting through the wreckage of our respective egos it’ll turn out we can be friends after all.” 

He smiles, soft and wan but genuine.

Beth lets his words filter slowly through her brain, poking at them for traps. “So, castling,” she says at last.

“Sure,” Benny agrees, “castling.”

They stay slumped on the couch a while longer, the silence back to their usual level of companionable instead of tense. It’s nice, this return to normality after so many days of awkwardness.

“There,” Benny says, “I think we got through that one okay.” 

Beth rolls her head to look at him. “You think it’s over?”

“Well.” Benny shrugs. “I basically gave you detailed instructions for how to shatter my nose and then just stood there, and you still didn’t do it. So I figure you’re not as mad at me as you want to be.”

Beth considers this. “Alright,” she says. “And you’re not mad at me?”

“It was nearly three years ago,” Benny replies. “But I’ve made you study enough of my games; you know I’m smart enough not to make the same mistake twice.”

“Good,” Beth says, and wonders why it doesn’t feel it.

-

One of the things that came up regularly on their pre-wedding organisational lists was what they were going to do about their respective tournament careers. Neither of them wants to give up competitive chess but there’s a very real chance that they could just end up constantly facing each other in finals, over and over and over, one of them eking a win or otherwise the exhausting grind to a stalemate. In the end, they decided to alternate the smaller American meets, play a handful each. The larger and international tournaments are something entirely different, but they’d be that way whether they were married or not.

Beth played in Chicago before the wedding, so this time it’s Benny’s turn to play in Boston. It’ll be mostly American players, though a smattering of Europeans usually end up arriving; Benny claims it’s no one he can’t handle, anyway. Beth scans the lists of competitors they’re expecting, and doesn’t see anyone she thinks will be an immediate problem. Benny spends an afternoon ransacking the boxes they filed their magazines into, pulling out back issues and tournament pamphlets to study the previous games of the highest-ranked players. Beth offers to help, but then realises that Benny has a weirdly encyclopaedic memory for his magazine collection, knowing the majority of the issues he needs without even glancing at their contents pages. 

It quickly becomes apparent that there’s not much that Beth _can_ do to help. Harry was the one who first taught her to properly study for competitions but it was Benny who showed her how to really train, to dedicate hours every day to practicing, researching, calculating. Beth plays a few of the printed games through with him so he doesn’t have to play both sides, and they discuss a few of the smarter pins, but overall Benny disappears into himself, making pages of neat notes in his cramped, impatient handwriting, tucking scraps of paper into books and magazines in a complicated reference system that Beth doesn’t even try to understand. She feels oddly redundant, watching Benny shifting pieces across the board, lower lip caught between his teeth, occasionally nodding to himself or reaching to jot something down. 

Leaving Benny to his studying, Beth finds other ways to entertain herself. She goes back to the chess club, spends a whole afternoon listening to Christine’s reminiscences of the various women’s championships and the financial wall she ran into that stopped her taking her career international; Beth sheepishly admits how she nearly scuppered her trip to Russia and Christine laughs one of her low throaty laughs before she congratulates Beth on sticking to her guns.

“The Federation never been particularly interested in advancing the women’s games,” she tells Beth. “They think there’s no real reward or money in it.” 

“They’ve never liked me,” Beth explains.

Christine waves a hand. “You could wear a sack and spend every day trying to promote chess and they still wouldn’t let you into their little gang. It took me a long time to realise it, but I was happier once I did.”

Beth makes a face. “They call up to talk to Benny, but they never want to talk to me. They wanted me to promote chess on the television, but now I actually do, I’m back to being too glamorous and frivolous.”

“You can’t win with them,” Christine replies, sighing. “Whatever you do, it’ll never be enough. I still find it funny that they’ve grudgingly accepted Benny.”

“He’s Benny Watts,” Beth says, making sure to lay a sarcastic drawl over the words to make Christine grin.

“He is now,” Christine agrees, “but I knew him in the late fifties when we were both still hanging around the Manhattan Club and clawing for space.”

Beth props her chin on her hands. “What was he like?” she asks.

Christine’s expression is carefully thoughtful; Beth recognises it as the one she wears before she makes a move in chess. “He hit the transition between child prodigy and adult grandmaster pretty hard,” she says at last. “This skinny teen with a face several years too young for him who’d never had the chance to be a real child, stuck in this Peter Pan limbo. He’d been around adults his whole life, playing and winning against all these men who thought it was fun or maybe fitting to teach the kid to drink and smoke and god knows what else; he was sixteen and there was nothing left to conquer.” Christine smiles wryly. “He still played with raw expertise that drove everyone crazy, he had a filthy temper and when it came around time to pay his membership he’d do this hustle with blitz that no one ever managed to beat until he had the cash for another month. In the end he learned to channel all that wildness into his playing, cultivated that cowboy attitude he drags around so he gets everyone’s attention but no one gets close.” 

Beth processes all of this. “He still does the hustle with blitz,” she says. “Completely cleaned me out the first time, I was about ready to kill him.”

Christine nods, something nostalgic in her expression. “I remember him goading this older guy – a middle-ranked player who thought he was better than he was, frankly – over a game in one of the informal club tournaments. Benny wound him up and wound him up and they ended up having to take it out onto the sidewalk.” She’s gazing out of the front window, looking at nothing as she talks. “I saw your wedding photos and I thought, he’s come a long way from that seventeen-year-old with the collar torn off his shirt and blood on his teeth.”

Periodically Beth comes close to telling Christine the truth about their marriage; she thinks if anyone would understand, Christine would. But they’re never alone in the club, and even though everyone always seems to be caught up in their own conversations and games, it would only take one unscrupulous eavesdropper to ruin everything. 

“I think that boy is still in there somewhere,” she says.

Christine’s mouth quirks. “I hope so.”

She also introduces Beth to a few of the more regular female chess players at the club – none of them have dedicated their lives to the game like Beth has, but they’re all enthusiastic and pleasant; Beth exchanges telephone numbers with a couple of them, and hopes that this might be the start of some new friendships in the city.

When she gets back to the apartment she finds Benny sitting at the kitchen table with a magazine and his chess board, apparently in the same position that he was in when she left, the ashtray full and his hair lank and messy from where he’s been running his hands through it. Beth brings him a glass of water and stands over him while he drinks it, then scrambles them both some eggs for dinner. At some point one of them should probably learn to cook real food, though Beth is determined that it won’t be her, and she’s not sure that she’d willingly eat anything prepared by Benny.

Dinner is Benny distractedly forking eggs into his face while testing an arrangement of pawns, while Beth sits and watches him with her own food until she eventually cracks. “Christine was telling me about your misspent youth.”

“Which part?” Benny asks, eyes still on the board.

“The part between that angel-faced kid I saw draw against Najdorf and whenever it was that you decided that John Wayne was your role model,” Beth replies.

Benny’s face twitches a little at the John Wayne dig, which is exactly what Beth was counting on to get him to actually reply. “You’re snooping,” he says, flat.

“Christine offered this all up,” Beth protests. 

“I don’t pester you about the orphanage,” Benny says, brow furrowed as he moves the Black rook to an open file and the White queen pawn in response. 

“Everyone knows about the orphanage,” Beth replies, “it’s in every profile on me that’s ever published.”

“And my whole life is printed in magazines,” Benny says. He sounds a little testy. “Most of them are in a box on the bottom shelf of one of our bookcases. You can track me losing my baby teeth and getting my growth spurts in every tournament photograph, it’ll be just like you were there.”

Benny’s _defensive_ , Beth realises at last, watching his shoulders hunch in on themselves as he maps out the next few moves of the game he’s working through, dinner forgotten to one side.

“We’re married,” Beth reminds him, “I’m pretty sure I can ask a couple of questions about your childhood without it turning into a melodrama.”

“We don’t have a normal marriage, and I was never a child,” Benny snaps, though Beth can tell the anger isn’t necessarily aimed at her. She sits quietly and finishes her food, and waits. Benny sighs. “I think I’ve been sitting here too long, too much nicotine, not enough actual daylight.”

It’s enough of a concession. “Eat the eggs your fake housewife lovingly prepared,” Beth advises dryly, and Benny huffs a half-laugh as she leaves the room.

The next day Benny takes over the living room, three boards scattered across the rug and two tournament pamphlets open at once. Beth stays in her room and reads the latest _Vogue_ , folding over the edges of the pages when she spots something she likes, but on the third run-through of the same Bob Dylan LP she gives up and goes out before she breaks the disc over Benny’s head. She feels a little at a loose end; she has a block of filming obligations next week, but they don’t exactly take much prep, and then she’s not competing until the US Open, held in Vegas again this year. She can always be practicing and honing her skills, but she has no specific imminent goal; Beth’s not used to being around another chess player preparing themselves, and finds herself a strange mixture of piqued and jealous watching Benny studying.

Beth takes herself to lunch, eats a complicated salad while leafing through the latest _Chess Life_ ; there’s a large section on the Chicago tournament and she reads about the matches she didn’t see, reads about her own performances. There’s a photograph of her just after her win, radiant and pleased, and she looks at that woman, herself just a month and change ago, and already feels separated from her, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. She turns the page to find an article about the wedding, not exactly the usual thing for _Chess Life_ but they run profiles on players all the time and this is really only a step up. The writer doesn’t try particularly hard to hide his disdain for Benny, but he has at least printed the entirety of Benny’s impromptu speech about why he doesn’t feel emasculated about marrying Beth, which makes her smile. There’s a photograph of Beth playing in the quarter-finals, judging by her outfit, poised and thoughtful as she looks at the board, and a photo of Benny in Cincinnati last year by the look of it, something wolfish in his smile as he reaches to move his rook. When she turns the page Beth is confronted by a set of pictures: herself and Benny in Vegas in Sixty-Six as reluctant co-champions, Benny smug, Beth barely holding herself together; the two of them in Ohio in Sixty-Seven after Beth won, a rueful twist to Benny’s mouth and Beth’s eyes lit bright; them looking at each other after Benny’s Cincinnati win last winter, fury and maybe something else in Beth’s eyes; and finally them standing outside Chicago city hall in their contrasting jackets and matching daisy buttonholes. It’s one of the ones the journalists outside took, and Beth has seen a bunch of them although this one is new to her. She and Benny are looking at each other and laughing about something, hands entwined around Beth’s bouquet. Maybe it’s the contrast to the three pictures above it that makes Beth’s breath catch in her chest, swallow hard; there’s so much history on this page, so much that the readers won’t understand or pick up on.

She brings back two packets of cigarettes for Benny, trades them to him on the understanding that she won’t have to listen to The Doors all night, and grabs a cushion to sit on the floor opposite him. They end up playing two games of speed chess simultaneously, each playing White on one board and Black on the other, barely any gaps between the clicking of the clocks. It’s tricky to do this and it always makes Beth wish she was more ambidextrous, but it seems to relax Benny and helps ease some of the weird feeling that’s been in Beth’s stomach since she read the _Chess Life_ piece. She doesn’t ask if Benny’s read it, what he thought of seeing them laid out like a semi-logical couple instead of a series of coincidences and accidents; either he didn’t think it was worth mentioning, or he hasn’t seen it and she doesn’t want to throw off his preparation.

Benny goes off to take a shower and Beth opens the window to clear some of the cigarette smoke, takes the opportunity to hide a few of her least favourite records under the couch so she’ll be spared from presumably waking up to _All Along The Watchtower_ again tomorrow. She definitely prefers Benny’s long periods of concentrated silence to when he wants background noise, but everyone has their quirks; how this is going to work when they’re both training for Vegas isn’t clear yet. The US Open Champion title is one that they both desperately want, and whatever truce they’ve formed by getting married isn’t going to get in the way of that.

They spend the evening playing through a few more of the games Benny wanted to study, bickering over their different interpretations of moves and what they think the original player should have done; it feels like what Beth hoped this marriage might be like, the two of them training each other and working together, minds always attuned. She goes to bed with her mind still moving pieces across the inside of her eyelids, and it doesn’t take all that long to fall asleep.

She wakes up for a glass of water at three-thirty in the morning and finds that Benny is still up, frowning over a book. She drinks her water and then stands in the living room doorway and watches him until he looks up.

“You’re going to be unbearable to live with if you lose, aren’t you?” she asks.

Benny gives her a half-smile, a one-shouldered shrug. “I’d say I’m pretty unbearable to live with now.”

“You’re working on it,” Beth agrees, keeping her voice soft. “You should get some sleep.”

“I will,” Benny replies distractedly, looking down at his book again.

Beth goes back to bed; she doesn’t hear Benny’s bedroom door close before she falls back into sleep.

-

With two days until the tournament, Benny has stopped studying all the time and has cut down on the smoking but he glitters with a restless energy that Beth understands but can’t offer any way to cipher. She wonders if this is what she looks like before playing, if this is what Alma used to live with, the odd tension that ebbs and flows at the strangest moments. Benny’s moods are more level, less snappish, but there’s still something taut in his shoulders, and Beth keeps finding him staring off into space, lips pressed together so hard they disappear. More than once, she finds herself thinking about Christine’s descriptions of a younger Benny, all sharp dangerous energy that he hadn’t learned to redirect yet.

This evening, Benny is apparently picking up books at random, flicking through them and then putting them back on the shelf. Beth doesn’t know what he’s looking for so she can’t suggest any particular title; she suspects that Benny doesn’t know what he’s looking for either. It can be tricky to know what books to take with you: too many, and you risk overloading yourself with research, but you don’t want to find yourself planning a strategy you can’t double-check in the safety of your own room. Beth carries around her old copy of _Modern Chess Openings_ nowadays, something like a good luck charm, the photograph of herself and Mr Shaibel tucked carefully between the pages. It’s a couple of editions out of date by now but the basics have remained the same if she wants to read back through anything. She doesn’t know what Benny likes to keep in his duffel, if he has a talisman of his own, but he doesn’t seem to have found what he wants yet.

Halfway through a Morphy biography, Benny slams the book shut and swivels around to stare fixedly at Beth. She’s reasonably sure that he _is_ getting some sleep, but then he seems to be awake whenever she is, so maybe he isn’t. Beth raises her eyebrows expectantly.

“You’re not packing,” Benny says.

“I’m… not,” Beth agrees slowly.

Benny’s eyes narrow. “You like to be coordinated, you think things through, you plan, but you’re not packing.” His mouth sets, a firm line. “You’re not coming to Boston.”

“No,” Beth says. “I’ve got filming for three days, the show’s host is going on vacation so we’re shooting the extra shows to air while he’s away. I told you this.”

Benny’s expression doesn’t flicker. “Did you.”

Beth scrabbles back through her memories. “I… did. I definitely did. I know we said we’d go to each other’s competitions but I can’t get out of this. I’m planning on coming for the final, Boston’s not far.”

Benny says nothing for a long pause, gaze still uncomfortably trained on Beth. After a moment he turns back to the bookcase, and Beth takes a breath. But then Benny spins back around again. “You know what, don’t bother.”

“You know you’ll get to the final,” Beth points out. “I want to come and watch.”

“Sure.” Benny’s mouth twists, humourless. “Beth Harmon deigns to drop by a real chess competition for a couple of hours just to prove she’s not a sell-out. She’s on television every week doing a job someone without the talent she has in her little _finger_ could do, but don’t worry, she can find time out of her busy schedule to show her face, it’s not all about the money, honest.”

His voice is so scathing and so venomous that it leaves Beth stunned for a second; sure, they’ve not talked much about her television role and she got the sense Benny was vaguely disapproving, but this raw contempt is something new and unexpected.

Beth takes a deep breath, sits up straight, and looks Benny in the eye. “For someone who is so disdainful about how I make my money, you certainly have no trouble spending it.”

Her voice doesn’t shake, stays low and cool, and she watches Benny take the blow like she actually landed one of those punches he taught her to throw. It’s not come up, but the fact is that Beth pays for their rent, their food; she paid for their wedding and their accommodation in Chicago, and the entirety of the honeymoon. Whatever Benny has or doesn’t have is probably keeping him in cigarettes and the occasional coffee, but in truth Beth doesn’t know, and hasn’t asked.

Benny opens his mouth and Beth wonders what he’s got left in his arsenal to throw at her. After a second he just shakes his head and walks out. The front door slams behind him a minute later. Beth stays on the couch and takes several deep breaths against a burn in her throat and a suspicious angry stinging in her eyes, and tries to work out what the hell just happened.

An hour later, Benny isn’t back and Beth finds that she has a throbbing headache, a sharp stabbing pain behind her eyes. She thinks about calling Jolene, but what can she say that hasn’t been pointed out to her before: she is volatile, Benny is volatile, their history is volatile, their present maybe even more so, and a smart person would have realised that this would overbalance all the benefits this marriage could offer. Castling, sure, but only to put your rook straight into the path of a well-placed bishop. 

Fuck, but Beth wants a _drink_.

It would be good, she thinks, if Benny came back and Beth was just fucking _bombed_ , incoherently so, a reminder that she owes him nothing. She can be drunk when she wants, and the fact that he doesn’t want her to be doesn’t mean a damn thing. Benny has been drunk, has been foolish, has probably done everything that Beth has and worse, and he hides it all now behind that condescending attitude and stupid hat, like he’s any better than she is, living his life with his finances on a knife-edge. Beth has fought and Beth has struggled and Beth has put up with his shit, his anger over things that are barely her fault, and what is she even trying to demonstrate anymore? She doesn’t need his approval, it’s emptier than his fucking bank account, this manipulative man-child trying to make himself seem knowing with a cowboy drawl and a swagger that gets women into his bed but not for long. Who made Beth think he could make her life easier with the lie of a marriage and who has instead dumped on her every last piece of resentment he’s carried for years because her knees didn’t go weak enough to crawl back to him after she fucked up her Parisian Invitational.

Her head is _thudding_ , like she’s getting the hangover with none of the payoff beforehand, and Beth can’t tell if her eyes are wet from pain or anger.

The first aid kit in the bathroom contains band-aids and bandages and gauze and antiseptic, Beth could probably patch up all the participants in a busy barfight and still have some left over, but there are no painkillers whatsoever. No pills of any kind. No medication. This wasn’t something that ever occurred to Beth but apparently it occurred to Benny, patronising her even in his absence.

There’s no way Benny would leave them both without so much as an aspirin.

Beth slams into his room; his duffel is on his bed, shirts and jeans foaming out of the top, but she ignores it, heading to rummage through his nightstand drawers. They’re almost empty, cigarette packets, pens, an old pack of playing cards with the box half-torn. There’s a strip of condoms in the left one; for a moment Beth remembers a woman breathlessly laughing Benny’s name in a Cincinnati hotel hallway, Benny saying that no one would care who Beth fucked once she was married, and she wonders who he’s got these for, briefly considers poking a hole in every packet out of sheer spite. In the end she replaces them, contemplating where else to try. 

There’s a desk against the wall of the room instead of the bureau Beth has, piled haphazardly with notebooks and magazines and a selection of second-hand novels, Kerouac and Chandler and Steinbeck, Vonnegut and Heinlein and Philip K. Dick. Above it is a pinboard with Benny’s vanity collection attached, his newspaper clippings and photographs, and Beth forces herself not to rip it all down, not to make a bad situation worse. There’s a locked drawer on the right-hand side, and Beth goes to find a hairpin. She never did learn to pick locks and eventually has to admit defeat, angrily hitting the drawer with the palm of her hand in case this magically makes it spring open. It doesn’t, but it does make one of the towers of magazines slip sideways and fall noisily onto the carpet, a sprawl of bent glossy pages. Beth swears softly and starts gathering them up, hoping Benny doesn’t have a secret organisational system, piling them back onto the desk. 

Underneath an old _Chess Review_ with Benny glaring up from the cover, Beth finds the photographs. They’re from the wedding – the ones taken by Townes during the ceremony. Beth has seen the pictures, he posted the prints to New York for them while they were in Paris, but apparently Benny got to them before she did because Beth hasn’t seen these before. In one of them Beth is signing the paperwork, bent over with her hair and veil in her face, and Benny is looking down at her. Beth can’t read his expression but he looks younger than she’s ever seen him, something open and vulnerable on his face. In the second picture Benny is concentrating on putting Beth’s ring on, and it’s Beth’s turn to see an unfamiliar expression on her face; something soft, something that’s nearly a smile curling her mouth. The last photo is of their second kiss; Townes has caught the moment Beth pulled Benny back in, the second before their mouths touched again, barely a breath of air between them. Beth’s hands are splayed against Benny’s cheeks. Her eyes are open; his are closed. 

Beth’s headache feels worse and she literally has no idea what to do with these, with why Benny has them, with why he’s hidden them from her. She shoves them into the _Chess Review_ , no idea where they fell from in the first place, and dumps all the other magazines onto the desk, desperate to get out of Benny’s room, out of his space, out of the scent of his cologne on everything.

Lying in her room in the dark in the hope it might help the headache alleviate, Beth finds herself thinking of Alma. Not Alma as she usually thinks of her, staunchly fond of Beth and determinedly in her corner no matter what, whether she understood what was happening or not, but Alma when she first met her. Alma, small and sad at Grandmother June’s piano, a thousand crushed dreams under her feet and her husband driving away without a glance in the rear-view mirror. _This_ is what marriage is, Beth knows: one person at home with no idea where the other person is, what they’re doing, if they’re ever coming back. She pretended it wouldn’t be that, like she and Benny could be courteous roommates, and that was naïve of her. She doesn’t know if her parents were formally married, she doubts it, but either way her mother was the one running and her father gave up chasing in the end. Beth has no idea if she should have hoped for him to catch up or not, and anyway she tries not to think about that anymore; Jolene is wrong, her parents will never be _gone_ , no matter what Beth does, but it does her no good to dwell.

She finds herself hoping that Mike will prove an exception. He and Susan are setting up their new home in Kentucky, a real home filled with wedding crockery and honest love, and Beth hopes Susan never has to sit alone wondering where her husband has gone.

Beth told herself that she would never be that woman, that she was too smart and too sharp to ever be the one left behind. But maybe it was inevitable, you live the marriages you know, and Beth has never seen anything but abandonment, over and over again.

She wakes up disoriented and fully-dressed on top of the covers in the dark to the sound of the phone ringing. Beth staggers to the living room to answer it, banging herself on the doorframe, nearly tripping over the coffee table. The clock on the wall tells her it’s nearly three in the morning. She snatches up the handset.

“He’s with me,” Levertov announces before Beth can say anything. “He told me not to call you but frankly this is reminding me too much of my parents’ marriage and I’m not finding myself in the middle of that scheisse again. He’s asleep on my couch, he’s fine.”

Beth lets out a long breath, not even trying to hide it. “Thank you,” she says at last.

“I thought the point of having a fake marriage was so that this kind of thing didn’t happen,” Levertov remarks, but his voice is kind.

“Yeah,” Beth sighs. “So did I.”

There’s an awkward pause, and then Levertov says: “I’ll come get his bag tomorrow and take him to Boston. A couple of old friends are playing there, I was thinking of going anyway. You need to focus on your job and not on Benny’s tantrum.”

Beth shuts her eyes against what suddenly threatens to be tears. “Are you sure?”

“Benny’s being Benny,” Levertov replies. “Personally, I think you should take that TV company for everything they’re offering and then ask for a raise. Don’t worry, I’ll keep him out of trouble.”

She chokes a half-laugh. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

Levertov laughs as well, a warm sound Beth is suddenly desperately grateful for. “Get some sleep,” he advises, “I can handle your arschloch husband.”

“Alright,” Beth says quietly. “You should sleep too.”

“I’ll think about it,” Levertov says. “Goodnight, Beth.”

Her bedroom light is blinding when she switches it on, fumbles herself into her nightdress; she considers brushing her teeth and removing her make-up but it all seems like so much effort, and instead Beth turns the light back off and crawls into her cold bed, the only peaceful oblivion she can afford to reach for, and finds herself thinking that if Benny thinks he can collapse their chaotic mess of a marriage over _this_ , he’s once again taken the wrong fucking bet.

-

The apartment feels very different in a way that Beth can’t put her finger on, now that she’s living there alone. It’s not like she and Benny were often there at the same time, and even less frequently in the same room at the same time, but there was a knowledge that someone was around, taking up space, another beating heart on the other side of the wall instead of the ghosts of memories and wishes. She always knew she’d be staying here while Benny was in Boston, but she thought she’d maybe wave him off, get phone calls in the evenings. Now it’s just Beth, rattling around in rooms full of furniture she didn’t choose and doesn’t own, eyes drawn repeatedly to shelves full of trophies they arranged half from pride and half from spite.

At least there is filming to focus on. The studio is busy, filming several shows and a special back-to-back, and while Beth is only a part of it, there’s still plenty to do. Her segments themselves aren’t particularly difficult to film; at the moment she’s describing attacking moves to the audience, guiding them through the easiest ways to capture an opponent’s pieces. For one of them she even shows how to checkmate in three moves; not a sequence you can ever use in a competition, but a neat party trick if you don’t know any actual chess players. When she’s not on set she sits in her dressing room and reads, or hangs out with the hair and make-up girls, listening to their easy brand of feminine gossip that she’s never been able to emulate, but they make an effort to include her and it’s nice, none of the underlying bitterness of her awkward early teens.

When she goes back to the apartment at night, Beth lingers to talk to Pete, who always has an interesting anecdote or a funny story to share. His discretion alone is impressive: he knows that Benny stormed out in the middle of the night days ago and hasn’t come back yet, and he hasn’t even implied to Beth that he knows this. It makes a change from Lexington, where her neighbours watched from behind their curtains and judged each other’s every move, claustrophobic and narrow-eyed. Beth barely knows her neighbours here, and her doorman is open and friendly and sympathetic, and doesn’t let on whatever he thinks about her marriage.

One night, when sleep is elusive, Beth ends up taking Benny up on his snarled advice and looks through his boxes of magazines. He was an adorable child with his golden hair and dark eyes, his small face screwed up with a look of concentration that Beth recognises from his adulthood, and an adorable smile for the cameras that’s sweet and boyish and long lost. His exhibition games are interesting to read, to watch Benny’s style alter as he grew up and learned more, a tiny serious boy shaking hands with Najdorf after their draw the year that Beth was _born_ , always with the head start. There are shots of Benny with his proud parents; he has his father’s eyes but in truth neither of them look much like him, and once he hits his teens they disappear from the official printed pictures. The photos of him in adolescence remind Beth of the ones taken for _Life_ when she was fifteen: there’s a similar stiffness to his posture, shoulders back in a collar and tie, hair combed into a crisp neat parting, holding his trophies close to his chest. 

In his late teens, Benny doesn’t look like any of the boys that Beth went to high school with, or even the boys in her college Russian class. His hair is longer, wilder, and there’s something darkly knowing in his smile. Without the moustache he looks younger than his age, but there’s a dangerous glint in his eyes that stops him from looking childish, his ranking seemingly climbing with every new magazine issue. Beth reads over more of his games; for three years he plays nothing but Black, and wins almost every match. She stares at his first cover of _Chess Review_ , Benny at eighteen and beautiful and fragile and terrible, and thinks that there’s something important that she’s _missing_. 

The next night Jolene calls her when she’s home from the studio, cheeks aching from her television smile, eyes aching from the excruciating lights. 

“This paper is kicking my ass,” Jolene says, “tell me something glamorous.”

So Beth does. She describes the burnt orange dress she wore for one of the shows she filmed today, the nipped-in waist and round neckline, the playfully short hemline, and how she was sure it wasn’t going to work at all until she was wearing it and someone was pinning up her hair and suddenly it looked lovely. She tells Jolene about the romance happening between one of the women in the studio canteen and one of the lighting operators; they both think no one knows, but _everyone_ does. In return, Jolene tells her about which of her classmates are hooking up, about the professor known for raising the grades of female students under very specific circumstances and how he invited Jolene to his office hours last week but she didn’t go. 

“Does that mean he’s going to fail you?” Beth asks.

“He can try,” Jolene replies grimly.

To cheer her up, Beth tells her about Four Tops performing _All In The Game_ yesterday, one of those songs that never seems to be off the radio at the moment. The producers don’t mind if she hangs around to watch the interviews or musical acts, and while Beth doesn’t always want to, she enjoyed watching the Motown legends, their sharp coordinated suits and easy smiles.

“Your fucking _life_ ,” Jolene groans when Beth’s done. “Who knew all your crazy chess studying would get you here?”

Beth thinks back to Methuen, the sweet musty smell of the pages of _Modern Chess Openings_ , the nights without drugs when she traced the Sicilian across the ceiling ‘til she knew it like she knew the individual breaths of her dormitory mates in the darkness. “Not me,” she admits.

They sit in easy silence for a long moment, and then Jolene adds: “speaking of crazy chess studying, how’s Boston going?”

Beth screws up her face, glad that Jolene can’t see her. “You keep better track of our lives than we do,” she says.

“Someone has to,” Jolene replies. “I assume your cowboy will be an ass if he doesn’t win.”

Jolene often refers to Benny as _your cowboy_ ; sometimes it makes Beth laugh, but right now it makes something twist sharply inside her.

“Presumably,” she says, trying to sound neutral. “I don’t know how he’s doing.”

“He’s not calling?”

“He’s not calling.”

“ _Jesus_.” There’s the click and snap of a lighter, Jolene lighting a cigarette on the other end of the line. Beth thinks she might like a cigarette too, but she stays sitting where she is. “You wanna talk about it?” Jolene asks at last.

Beth considers this. “No.”

“Sure?”

If she’d wanted to talk about it, she’d have called Jolene when Benny first left, when she was raw and angry and, with hindsight, a little panicked. Now she’s calmer, although still no clearer on the exact dimensions of this particular stumbling block. “I’m sure. And you’re just looking for an excuse to give up on your paper for the night.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you!” Jolene protests, but she’s laughing.

“Uh-huh,” Beth says, “of course not. Go back to studying.”

She feels a little more settled once Jolene hangs up; there’s no filming tomorrow, and now she doesn’t have to get up early for a train, she could do something with the night. Christine’s place stays open pretty late, or Wexler’s still in the city and usually up for a movie or dinner, or there’s a couple of clubs the girls on set have recommended as having good music and not too many grabby men; Beth could go and dance, be surrounded by people. If a man wanted to dance with her she could dance with him; she’s married, but she’s not _married_ , and no one will care whose hands are on her waist. 

In the end Beth lies on the couch in front of the television, half-drowsing in front of one of the old movies Alma loved. It’s implausible, a touch too saccharine, everyone constantly beautiful, but Beth’s had a busy few days and it helps to relax her.

When the phone rings again just after the end of the movie, Beth speaks as soon as she picks up: “you really need to finish that paper, Jolene.”

“It’s me,” Levertov says.

“Arthur.” Beth swallows. “Are you alright? Is Benny alright?”

“We’re… okay.” There’s a tone in his voice that Beth can’t place, some emotion she can’t pin. “Were you still planning on coming to Boston tomorrow?”

“I assumed it wasn’t a good idea,” Beth tells him, because that’s the simplest answer.

Levertov hesitates and then says: “I think you should come. The final doesn’t start ‘til the early afternoon.” There’s a voice in the background; he murmurs _fuck_ and hangs up.

Beth stands by the telephone in the empty apartment and looks out of the window at the always busy, always lit streets of the city that doesn’t sleep, and thinks that _fuck_ just about covers it.

-

The train journey to Boston is a little over three hours, and Beth is a veteran of journeys far longer in far less comfortable seats; she skims a magazine, stares aimlessly out of the window, and lets her brain percolate what she’s going to have to say to Benny without consciously focusing on it.

Beth’s not played in Boston before but the hotel venue is like all of them are, full of a particular kind of man, analysis boards in the lobby with the semi-final games posted. People turn to look at her as she walks past, she’s easily recognisable of course, but Beth is aware that there’s a slightly different buzz about the way they’re staring, an energy and a pattern of low murmurs that she can’t decipher. Something runs cold down her spine, but there’s nothing hostile in anyone’s gaze, nothing dangerous; just the sense that they know something that she doesn’t, or they’re putting something together that she won’t be able to stop.

The analysis boards are nothing fancy, just paper pieces pinned onto paper boards tacked to large chalkboards with the moves written up beside them. Beth stops to have a look, learns that Benny’s facing Joseph Maimon in the final. Beth’s never played Maimon but she’s seen him play and read several of his match reports; he hails from Israel and usually plays in Europe but he makes a couple of trips to the states a year, leaves a trail of devastated American players in his wake, and sweeps back to do the same thing in France, England and Scandinavia. He’s about ten years older than Benny, grey starting to sprinkle his dark curly hair, a handsome jawline and a mouth that never seems prone to smiling. He’s got flaws and he’s beatable but he’s pretty formidable.

The other match pinned up is Benny’s semi-final one, against the latest California State Champion. Beth looks at the moves and then looks at the names again, sure that someone’s gotten them the wrong way around. Benny’s on Black, nothing unusual there, but everything after that can’t be right. White opened with his knights, aiming for centre control immediately, but instead of developing his main pieces Benny pushed his pawns toward the White ranks and, six moves in, swept across his bishop to check the White king. Sure, Beth was demonstrating a quick check for the cameras two days ago, but that wasn’t for _tournaments_ , it was for something fun between amateurs. Benny’s never liked to over-rely on his pawns but by pushing them so hard White was forced to deploy his queen early. Beth recognises the strategy, and the vicious use of the rooks that follows: it’s Alekhine, absolutely brutalising Reti into a resignation in 1925.

_You attack like Alekhine_ says the Benny in Beth’s head to the real Beth in Ohio in 1967. A respect for it, for her recklessness, but the barrier was clear: Benny does _not_. Benny’s more a sniper than a battering ram, moving when you least expect it.

Beth stands and reads through the game again, Benny hammering Mr California into a queen sacrifice and an ugly resignation, feeling the stares of strangers on her back. 

“Oh, thank _God_ ,” says a voice to her left and she turns to see Levertov standing beside her. He grimaces. “I see you’re catching up.”

“What…” Beth trails off. She knows what happened before Benny left for Boston; it’s pretty certain that Levertov does too. Beth can beat Benny at chess a thousand times and he’ll still manage a smile at the end but she hit a different nerve this time, sank something venomous deeply into his ego, and the cracks are showing.

“Here.” Levertov guides her to one of the lobby couches, hands her a little notepad. “I started taking notes on his games once I realised what was happening.”

Beth skims the first few games, focusing more on the later matches as Benny got closer to the final. He’s playing well, no draws in the entire tournament, but where Benny’s usually a garotte wire in the dark, a knife between the ribs when you thought his hands were empty, he’s now a machine gun, sacrifices that look careless but turn out to be calculated, fierce captures, hammering his opponent into submission. It’s a storm of exquisite fury and utter destruction, risky to play and gloriously damaging in the pay-off, and it’s not like Benny at all.

It takes a little longer, but then Beth realises why everyone is looking at her, the low hum of interest that’s dogged her since she arrived. Benny _isn’t_ playing like himself. He’s playing like her.

“Oh my God,” Beth says.

“He won’t talk about it,” Levertov tells her. “We played through his games in the evenings, worked through them, you know, and he shut me down every time I tried to ask.”

“Maybe he couldn’t explain it,” Beth murmurs. She isn’t sure she understands completely, but it makes a kind of sense that she can’t put into words. Beth disappointed him and he disparaged her career and she struck at his pride, and now Benny is playing as both of them in all his hurt fury. No wonder the spectators are so bemused, who knows how they’ve interpreted this.

“I think he’s got a good chance in the final,” Levertov offers at last, Beth mutely returning his notebook. “Well. He’ll either crush Maimon or he’ll go down in flames.”

“I assume that’s what he’s hoping for,” Beth says.

Levertov rolls his eyes, looking frustrated. “I knew he was being an arschgeige when I agreed to come with him, but I hoped it would have worn off by now.”

“Did you ask me to come here so I could apologise?” Beth asks.

“Nothing that drastic,” Levertov replies, and laughs. “But it’s time for Benny to be your problem again, you did sign all the paperwork for him.”

“I did,” Beth agrees wryly. She manages a smile. “I’m guessing we’re _less_ like your parents now?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Levertov sighs.

In a conference room upstairs, everything is set for the final. Beth keeps her shoulders back and her expression neutral, glad for Levertov’s presence at her side as she walks through the crowds of interested spectators. She knew she was coming to be observed as Benny’s wife as much as anything else and applied her make-up with care, elegantly dressed in sharply creased black cigarette pants and a pale blue blouse with a bow at the neck, a smart black blazer to go over the top. She looks calmly collected, a united front of confidence with her husband, who is already sat at the table and not looking at his audience. Beth wonders if he knows she’s here, isn’t sure which answer she’d prefer. At least all the attention means that she gets a chair to sit on, aware as she crosses her legs and keeps her back straight that several of the journalists present have started scribbling away industriously. 

Despite his usually glowering cowboy outfit, Benny is playing White for the final; Maimon is dressed neatly in a dark blue suit and tie, hair carefully styled. Beth’s not sure if Benny has even combed his hair since he left their apartment, but no one is going to suspect anything because that’s what the public persona of Benny Watts _is_. Maimon runs his fingers over his row of pawns and then reaches to punch Benny’s clock.

The game starts out less violently than Beth expected: Benny’s doing a variant of the Pirc Defence, getting out his knights and central pawns in a neat formation. It all unfolds pretty quickly: Maimon encases his own king in a safety-net of pawns and there are a few swift, early exchanges, they each lose a couple of pawns while developing across the centre of the board. Benny takes one of the Black knights but sacrifices a bishop to do so and Beth fights not to flinch, to keep her expression calm and thoughtful, while her fingernails dig hard into her knee. She hopes that Benny knows what he’s doing but she honestly can’t tell if he has a strategy or just a plan to surge forward and see how it all rolls out.

What happens next is surprisingly fast, sends a jolt through the spectators. Benny attacks Maimon’s protected king and sacrifices a knight to one of the pawns – Beth feels her mouth fall open at the unequal trade, Benny can be foolhardy but he’s not _stupid_ – but then he moves his other knight, capturing the pawn and checking the king. Maimon tries to move his king to safety, but he hasn’t developed enough of his back row and the king is trapped by a rook, a bishop, and ironically his previously protective pawns. Benny moves his queen as the final nail in the coffin, fully encasing the king in a wider net – even if the Black king can evade the knight he can’t evade the queen, and his own pieces have boxed him in.

Maimon looks slightly sick as he offers Benny his hand in concession, and Beth runs back through the game in her mind as people start applauding; twenty-three moves and Benny closed a suffocating trap around his opponent. Perhaps he played a little like both of them today.

Benny stands up to receive his adulation; flashbulbs go off and people are buzzing about what they’ve just seen, the swift cruel mastery of it, and Beth already knows she’ll be reading dozens of analyses of this match for months to come. Benny grins for the cameras, the fastest gunslinger in the West again, and then his eyes fall on Beth. Beth keeps her expression calm, smiles her bloody-lipsticked smile for her conquering hero, applauding with everyone else. Something twists in Benny’s mouth and he steps off the dais to come to her. 

“You came,” he says softly, the words public, the tone private.

“I did,” Beth agrees. “I said I’d be here for your win.”

She’s acutely aware that everything they say and do now is being scrutinised, that neither of them can admit that they fought before Benny left for Boston, that his switch in playing style is because he’s mad at her, that anything could happen right now and it could be disastrous. They got married to protect her reputation and she’s pretty sure that whatever else happens, Benny won’t violate that.

What Benny actually does is grab her and kiss her, a public kiss that’s not quite chaste, dipping her like she’s the lucky girl at the end of a movie. It’s ridiculous and showy and mostly for the cameras, but Beth feels the way Benny moves her whole body, swift and strong, and knows that this isn’t over, that it hasn’t even begun yet. His mouth is hard where it opens against hers, a tightness to his movements that can’t be anything but anger. She puts her hands on Benny’s shoulders, lets his hat hide her face from the cameras, and knows that this over-the-top photo will be printed in far too many publications, and everyone who sees it will think they have a wonderfully balanced marriage of chess and passion. It will do the job perfectly, and Beth already hates everyone’s misinterpretation.

Benny sets Beth back on her feet and they stand frozen for a long moment. His eyes are glittering and sharp and Beth fights to keep her expression neutral, attention caught by the smear of her red lipstick on Benny’s lower lip. She reaches out to smudge it off and he finally blinks, exhales.

“I’ll leave you to your fans,” she says softly, making it clear that there will be an _afterwards_ , and walks away before Benny can reply.

The staff at the front desk _definitely_ recognise her, which is helpful. Beth assumes a brightly vacant smile, leans on the counter and drops her voice to a friendly secretive level.

“My husband, Benny Watts, is staying here, and I don’t have a key for his room,” she explains. “I was wondering if I could get one?” The concierge hesitates, so Beth leans in a little bit further and adds: “He’s just won the whole tournament, you see, and I was hoping to surprise him there so we could celebrate.” She drops her gaze in a parody of demureness, and then raises it again, hopeful. 

“I- I’m sure we can make an exception, Mrs Watts,” he stammers, flushed, and Beth smiles sweetly and takes the key to room 301 with satisfaction.

Someone’s been in today to clean: the bed is neatly made, fresh towels in the bathroom, empty trashcan. The room still smells of cigarettes and Benny’s cologne, and because he never unpacks his clothes are spilling out of his duffel as usual. His chess board is on the desk, laid out ready, with a neat stack of magazines beside it. Apart from that, it’s as impersonal as all spaces Benny inhabits are, he’s always so focused on his interior life. Beth uses the bathroom and she washes her hands, looking at his razor on the edge of the sink, the single toothbrush in the glass. 

There’s nothing to snoop for, and even though it’s a neutral hotel room Beth still feels like she’s invading somewhere. She sits down at the desk, props her chin on her hand, and settles down to wait.

-

Benny arrives earlier than Beth was expecting and doesn’t look surprised to find her in his room; either the staff downstairs said something or he correctly predicted what she’d do. She could have waited in the bar, but there’s nothing left that they can say to one another in public. He’s still riding his win, the victory shining out of every pore, something bold in his posture that comes with the coat and the reluctant admiration of the spectators.

“Beth,” he says.

“Benny,” she replies, and forces herself to stay completely still while she waits to see what he does next.

He considers her for a long moment, brow furrowed, mouth tight, and then he sighs and takes off his hat, walking past her to dump it and his coat on top of his duffel. He looks smaller without them, shoulders already starting to curl in on themselves. Beth watches him as he exhales heavily, scuffs his hands through his messy hair. 

“Are you happy now?” Benny asks without turning around.

Beth doesn’t move. “Are you?”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Benny mutters, the word spilling out fast and hard. He spins around. “Why are you _here_ , Beth?”

“I said I’d come to watch the final,” she replies, fighting to keep her voice flat, calm. “And here I am.”

“Right.” Benny’s mouth twists and he digs in the back pocket of his jeans, pulling out a folded piece of paper. Beth recognises it as his winner’s cheque. “Was this what you were looking for?”

He throws it at her, and maybe there’d be more of a dramatic effect if it wasn’t a single piece of paper; it flutters to the carpet several inches from her feet. Beth flinches anyway, more from the ugly look on Benny’s face than the gesture. She makes no move to pick it up.

“That should cover my half of the rent for a while,” he says.

Beth meets his gaze and holds it, refuses to look away. “How long are you going to keep this up?” she asks. “Because I didn’t come here for you to be a fucking coward.”

It’s Benny’s turn to flinch and he’s the first to blink, looking down at his boots. “Then what did you come here for? And don’t tell me that it’s because you were desperate to watch me play.”

Beth takes a breath, but she made her choice on the train. She adjusts her posture a little so she looks less confrontational, and says: “I came to exchange queens.”

Something in Benny stills. He’s not looking at her, and she watches his jaw work in profile as he swallows.

“You’ve always said how we think alike, how similar we are,” Beth tells him, her words dropping into a heavy silence. “We could just keep hurting each other forever, there’ll always be something new we can drag up. But then I don’t think this marriage will last very long. And I thought about letting it collapse after you walked out, everyone would believe that you were the asshole and I was the naïve ingenue, I might just make it out okay, but we’ve put a lot of time and effort into this lie, it would be a shame for it to break down two months in.”

Benny sits down on the end of his bed, darts a glance at Beth before returning his gaze to the carpet. It’s got ugly swirls of brown and beige and taupe, Beth can see the fascination, but it doesn’t help her figure out if Benny is listening to what she’s saying, if he agrees with her.

“So, to overwork a metaphor, I have come here to exchange queens. We’ve managed it before.”

The queen is the best piece to attack with: she has the best range of movement, her captures are frequently the most dramatic and important, and she’s the best piece to have in one’s arsenal, no matter how clever you are with the others. To trade queens is usually only an act of the reckless and the desperate: you take away the other player’s power, but you forfeit your own advantage in doing so. It can lead to a range of smart and unusual and complex endgames between grandmasters, but it’s not a move to make lightly. Under specific circumstances, though, it can be a smart tactic, a way to entirely change the nature of the game. Beth’s aware that she often uses chess as a way to parse her reality, to help dictate her life, but she really could think of no other option here.

Beth looks at Benny’s slumped shoulders, the tension in his posture, his hair hanging in his face, and takes a chance.

“I grew up in a trailer,” she tells him. “My mother was a mathematician but something happened to her and she took me and we lived in that trailer until she decided she didn’t want to live anymore. Then I lived in the Methuen home, where I had a toothbrush and a doll and a daily dose of green vitamins that almost made the nights bearable. When Alma adopted me, I had a change of clothes and two books and a cheap plastic hairband that was a gift to make me look wholesome, the kind of teenage orphan you’d want to take home with you. And Alma did her best but her husband didn’t give her much and she had even less to pass on to me.”

It’s Beth’s turn to look down; she talks to her hands, interlaced in her lap. “I thought that was behind me, but then I wanted to go to Russia, and if Jolene hadn’t been better at saving than I’ve ever been then I wouldn’t have made it. I want to go to Russia again, and no one will fund me. Either I compromise myself so that church will fund me – and I think that bridge is burned now – or I spend hours begging men for money that I know and they know they don’t intend to give me. I need money for my career, or I won’t have one. I could only play at tournaments, write articles for magazines about the _artistry_ of the game, and I might just keep my roof in Kentucky over my head as long as nothing breaks or leaks or gives out. Or I can do something that I enjoy, that isn’t difficult, that takes up a small part of my life, and with my earnings I can do what I like without being beholden to anyone: not my family, not my friends, not the Chess Federation, not the fucking Christian Crusade.”

She feels a little breathless when she’s finished, knows that she’s flushed, and she risks a look at Benny to see if he’s listening, if this is working at all. He’s looking at her, expression sombre, but at least he doesn’t look so angry. 

Benny chews his lower lip for a moment and then looks back down at the carpet. “It was my grandfather who found out I could play chess. I was five and curious about the set and I think he taught me just to try and keep me quiet so I wouldn’t trash his study on a wet Sunday afternoon, but then I turned out to be good at it. Really, _really_ good at it. And I liked it, it made sense to me in a way that nothing else had, I enjoyed it in a way I’d never enjoyed anything, like it had just been waiting for me to discover it, you know? Like we were always supposed to find each other.”

He looks up briefly and Beth nods, because she remembers that same feeling, watching Mr Shaibel move the pieces in the peaceful half-dark of the basement, like she was discovering a whole new world that had been built only for her.

“It was great,” Benny carries on. “I got to study chess as much as I wanted, I got to beat adults, I got to go to cool places and play more chess. My parents were _very proud_.” There’s a weird sharpness in his voice that Beth can’t understand, a bitterness in his expression. “I just wanted to play chess; they were the ones who realised it could be a career. A well-publicised and lucrative career. There’s a book of clippings somewhere, all the interviews they gave about their genius son, the pressures and the joy, the college fund they were making for me with all my winnings.”

Benny is fidgeting with his ring and a small part of Beth wants to tell him that he can stop, he doesn’t have to keep talking with his posture crumpling in on itself, tension in every line of his body. But he can’t stop, not just because she’s wildly curious, but because if they don’t get this out now then maybe they never will.

“I was sixteen when I found out the ‘college fund’ was a lie,” Benny says simply. “There was no money put away for me. There was no money put away anywhere. My parents had spent all of it, and more, and then more again; anything I ever earned or won just fell into this bottomless pit of debt they were never going to climb out of. They fucking _loved_ having a little prodigy because he could make them money in a way a regular kid never could have.” He laughs, sharp, brittle. “They could have kept this going longer but I was due to play at an Invitational in Florida and I guess someone had called some debts in because all of a sudden I couldn’t go. I couldn’t pay for my flight or my hotel or any of it. Hell, I couldn’t even pay for the greyhound to hop a state over and play an Open I stood a good chance of winning, I didn’t have the money to cover my entry fee.”

He falls silent for so long that Beth prompts him: “what did you do?”

“I hitchhiked,” Benny shrugs. “When I got to the Open I looked around at all these guys who had read about me in magazines and sneered at my baby face and I bet them I could take them apart in less than twenty moves. And then when I’d done that I did it again to someone else, over and over, and then I had a stake and could afford a cheap room and to eat a couple of times over the course of the tournament and when I won I had some cash in my pocket, I had a bag with some clothes and a chess set in it. I never went back to my parents’ house again.”

“What happened to them?” Beth asks.

“Oh, they’re still there,” Benny replies. “Calcifying in their own greed. I get a phone call sometimes, can I spare a few thousand dollars, just this once.” His mouth twists, tight. “I signed all that paperwork because while I would never touch your money I don’t ever, ever want there to be the slightest possibility that they could have it. They’ve taken enough, and they never learn.”

The way that Benny has always avoided talking about his parents, Beth just assumed that they were dead. The idea that she has living in-laws is a little startling, might take some processing, but she can tell from the raw hurt radiating from Benny whether he realises it or not that she’ll never meet them. She doesn’t think she wants to – for all the failings of both of her mothers, they both loved her, and neither ever used her. 

“I don’t understand,” Beth finally says. “If you know what it’s like to have nothing-”

“Why the gambling?” Benny finally smiles, rueful. “Well, at first it was because I realised there’s way more money to be made from cards than from chess, the amounts of money people throw around are _insane_ , it was the perfect way to fund my chess career, particularly once I worked out how to cheat.”

“But it doesn’t fund your chess career,” Beth reminds him.

“It didn’t fund _your_ chess career,” Benny corrects her mildly. 

Beth thinks about calling Benny, the tightness of his voice when he said _I don’t have it_. Beth was not the first person to ring him and ask for money and, oh, _ouch_.

“Well, it doesn’t cover your parking tickets or your phone bill or that time Wexler told me about when you didn’t have any electricity and held obnoxious parties by candlelight for three weeks,” Beth says.

“Sometimes it does,” Benny replies. He hesitates. “Chess… chess has been a part of me for twenty-four years. It’s what I think about, it’s what I do, it’s the world that I live in. When I win it feels good because I’ve worked for it, because I’m clever enough, because my pieces are extensions of my hands, my fingers, my brain. When I lose it’s my own fault, but later I can find what went wrong and exorcise it. But cards… even if I’m not cheating, even if I’ve just managed to keep more of a straight face than the other guys, I don’t earn that win, it’s just _chance_ , and it’s a good feeling. Luck is a fucking trip and a half.” He runs a hand through his hair. “You win or you lose because of a scrap of card and the ability to hold your nerve, and sometimes I can influence it and sometimes I can’t, and either way I can’t control it, I’m not seven moves ahead, it’s a free-fall, and sometimes losing everything feels better than having it in the first place.” His eyes flick to Beth. “I know you know what that feels like.”

Beth nods, not sure she can voice the agreement aloud. “I’m trying not to do it anymore,” she says instead.

“Well,” Benny says, “so am I.”

_Castling_ , thinks Beth, and finally leans down to pick up the cheque. “Do you want this back?” she asks.

Benny looks at the paper and then at her and then at the neatly written monetary amount. “Not yet,” he says quietly and Beth nods, tucks the cheque away. Benny gives her a sheepish smile. “Think Levertov will drive us back to New York?”

“I think he will if we promise not to talk at any point,” Beth replies. 

“He’ll just pick a radio station we both hate,” Benny points out.

Beth is exhausted; there’s a lot to think about, and she still doesn’t know if this is enough, if they’ll be right back furious with each other next week. “I think I can handle that,” she says.

-

[extracts from _Chess Life_ , July 1970 issue]

_…Of the players redefining modern chess in the last half-decade, there are none more famous on American soil than two home-grown champions whose clashes have taken on mythic proportions. Grandmaster Benny Watts (29) was the undisputed king of American chess until Grandmaster Beth Harmon (21) arrived on the scene, altering the landscape forever with her refusal to relegate herself to the women’s leagues, proving not only that the fairer sex could play as well as the men, but that they could frequently play better. After becoming US Open Co-Champions in 1966, Harmon returned the following year to take the title of US Champion outright from Watts, and while focus on her personal life and international career meant Harmon did not return to defend her title in ’68 or ’69, she is here at the start of this new decade to face Watts, once again the current reigning champion._

_The stakes would be high enough based on their history alone, but in an unexpected development that surprised the entirety of the chess world, Harmon and Watts announced their engagement in January of this year and married in Chicago in early April. The union of two such titanic rivals is unprecedented and caused much speculation as to how this would affect their respective careers. With Harmon taking the top spot at the Greater Chicago Open on her wedding day, and Watts conquering in the Boston Tornado tournament in late May, it appears that rumors of the newlyweds getting distracted and forfeiting their advantages were incorrect. However, this July’s US Open is the first time Harmon and Watts will have competed together since going public with their relationship, and also the first time they will have officially played each other since Watts beat Harmon in Cincinnati last October._

_With the eyes of the world on them, curious as to how this extraordinary couple will navigate the Las Vegas Open with their chess credentials and marriage intact, I sat down with them in their Manhattan apartment to discuss how they handle their training, the pressure, and each other._

_“We’re still settling in,” Harmon informs me apologetically as she gives me the tour of their new home. “We’re both so busy neither of us have time to be here much.”_

_In fact, their apartment is charmingly bohemian: we drink coffee from mismatched cups in their living room, which contains pillows decorated with chequerboards and a truly dazzling array of tournament trophies most players would give a vital organ for. Following my line of sight, Watts grins rakishly and says: “we both know who we are, I’m not sure false modesty does us any favours.”_

_Looking at Harmon and Watts sitting side by side on their couch, you could initially be forgiven for wondering what drew them together. Harmon, with her movie-star good looks and understated deep red shift dress, is a sharp contrast to Watts, a self-styled maverick in faded jeans and an array of silver jewellery. While both started playing at a young age, Watts grew up in the public chess world, while Harmon made her public debut in mid-adolescence, displaying a maturity and grace that Watts will himself admit that he has never had. However, watching the two of them together, it becomes clear that despite an epic rivalry that has kept chess fans entertained for years, the two are as well-matched off the board as they are on it. They talk over each other, finish each other’s sentences and expand on the other’s train of thought with comfortable ease; while both are ostensibly talking to me, I frequently get the sense that they forget that I’m there until I ask them another question._

_[…]_

_Acknowledging the amount of pressure and scrutiny they are facing at the upcoming US Open, I suggest that the best option might be for Harmon and Watts to find themselves co-champions again. They both react as though I have suggested re-enacting_ Romeo and Juliet _in the lobby of the Stardust hotel, exchanging matching horrified looks._

_“I hated being co-champions,” Harmon tells me vehemently. “Every time I heard the title it was a reminder that I had been defeated so publicly.”_

_“I have no interest in sharing the title again,” Watts adds. “I would rather lose outright, for me it’s an unacceptable compromise.”_

_With the country’s two top players living together and training one another, the expectation of analysts and of Harmon and Watts themselves is that they will be facing each other in the final. Their skills are so evenly matched that I wonder if they will be able to avoid ending up with a draw and being forced into sharing the title anyway. Watts is fresh from his definitive victory in Boston, where he stunned competitors and spectators alike with a sharp diversion from his usual playing style into one that seems more in line with Harmon’s._

_“A successful experiment,” he replies dismissively when I ask about it. “I don’t know if I’ll do it again but I could stand to add some more Alekhine moves to my repertoire.”_

_Harmon’s face remains inscrutable when I ask if she had a hand in Watts’ change of strategy, but she does state that she has no intention of implementing any of Watts’ signature moves into her own play._

_[…]_

_When I remark upon the fact their rivalry doesn’t seem to have diminished, both Watts and Harmon laugh. As we’ve talked their bodies have been increasingly angling toward each other; by now they bracket either end of the couch, knees brushing from time to time. While both remain professional and engaged throughout the interview, it’s easy to see that they are newlyweds in the way they constantly watch one another, returned from their Parisian sojourn but evidently still in the honeymoon period._

_“Neither of us saw any point in retiring,” Harmon tells me. “Benny and I are both at the top of our game, and our professional lives are very different to our personal ones.”_

_When I point out that by getting married their personal and professional lives have blended, Watts nods and gives me a rueful smile. “We’re still navigating where the lines are and where they blur, but frankly until now marriage never appealed to me, it seemed like too much of a compromise.”_

_Harmon is nodding. “I don’t see how I could have married anyone else,” she explains to me. “Benny and I think very similarly, and our goals are alike. While that may cause problems further down the line, I don’t think I could have anyone in my life who didn’t understand my motivations or who expected me to abandon them.”_

_“I think there’s still a misconception about marriage,” Watts remarks. “I’ll freely admit it was one I had too: that when you get married you’re supposed to take on a certain level of maturity, you settle down in suburbia, nine to five, get a lawn to mow and tablecloths and the next thing you know you have three kids and all you want in life is to read the newspaper on a Sunday afternoon in peace.”_

_“That’s very specific,” Harmon says to him. She looks to me. “I was concerned too, but we’ve both learned that marriage means doing pretty much what you were doing before, but now you get to do it with the person that you love.”_

_Watts’ gaze immediately leaps back to Harmon and she turns her head; in yet another of several silent exchanges they have throughout our conversation, his mouth opens and closes again, while Harmon’s expression seems to change very little but she doesn’t blink. I am never able to discern what these little interludes involve but both participants clearly do, the familiarity in their non-verbal discussions yet another reminder of what a perfect match of kindred spirits they appear to have founded._

_“When our engagement was announced, people kept expressing surprise that I’d decided to settle down,” Watts says after a moment. “I think that’s just another example of misconceptions about marriage, that once you’re hitched you can’t do anything anymore, you’re static. Neither Beth nor I have settled at all. I don’t think we intend to.”_

_Harmon smiles. “Well, I think there might be a tablecloth somewhere in the apartment,” she offers._

-

Las Vegas in July turns out to be _unbearable_. They get off the plane into a wall of heat, the desert in the height of summer, and Beth’s light dress and tennis shoes immediately feel like she’s wearing too much clothing. Even Benny concedes to carry his leather coat over his arm, adding a pair of aviator shades beneath his hat. The sun is blindingly bright and even with all the windows of their taxi open, it’s almost suffocating as they crawl down the strip, skin sticking to the seats. It’s a dry, breathless heat that feels like it’s sucking everything out of the air. Beth was a mess of energy on the plane, but all she can do now is slump limply in the car, hair sticking to her neck.

Thankfully, the Stardust Hotel has air conditioning. Walking inside is like entering a pool of cool water – and Beth will definitely be getting acquainted with their lido later – and she pushes her sunglasses on top of her head while hoping her eyeliner hasn’t melted all over her face. At least the temperature won’t distract her from playing; Beth can’t even imagine trying to make an intelligent move while the heat pressed down on her.

Their room is decorated in various neutral shades with a large window overlooking the busy mess that is Vegas. Benny kicks off his shoes and folds into a chair immediately, while Beth goes into the spacious bathroom to run her wrists under the cold tap and tie up her hair. When she’s repaired her sweat-smudged make-up and is feeling a little more like a human being, a thought occurs to her, and she walks back into the room.

“This isn’t a suite,” she says, and watches realisation tumble across Benny’s face.

“I can go talk to them,” he offers. “I know they’re pretty booked for the tournament, but there’ll be another room somewhere, we’ll just be primadonnas who need separate spaces for our prep.”

Beth thinks about the fuss of demanding another room, of having to go track Benny down somewhere in the hotel if they want to play through a match, of the last few weeks they’ve spent almost peaceably in the apartment swapping research and resources, driving their friends mad with their focus. 

“We’ve shared a bed before, and it was about half the size of this one,” she says at last.

“I was told I steal the covers,” Benny says, his tone neutral.

“I don’t think that will be a problem in July,” Beth replies, careful.

She can feel the way both of them are edging around this, maybe waiting for the other to break first, not wanting to be the one to refuse. It’s not like this wasn’t something Beth thought about when they were first engaged, considering that they’d be spending a lot of time together, presumably sharing hotel rooms, and she dismissed it as something that wouldn’t be a problem given their history. That seems sort of wilfully ignorant of her now, all these months later, but then neither of them really realised how complicated this was set to get. Perhaps they should have done, but Beth’s foresight has never been good anywhere but on a chess board.

“You’re sure?” Benny says, and Beth can’t tell if he’s checking for her wellbeing or if he wants her to refuse because his pride won’t let him.

Well, he’s not the only proud one here. “I’m sure,” she says.

Once they’ve rested and Beth has unpacked and Benny has rummaged amongst his crumpled clothing for his chessboard and books to stack on the desk, they go down to officially sign in for the competition, check out the boards of competitors, and generally immerse themselves into the atmosphere. Beth can’t miss that many of their would-be opponents do not look particularly pleased to see them, given that if Beth doesn’t win Benny presumably will, easily crushing their chances of even taking second place, but there are a few other acquaintances around who smile. Wexler and Levertov have stayed in New York and while Townes was trying to swing coming as a photographer, the paper’s board needs him to stay and do something that sounded both boring and complicated when he was complaining about it on the phone to Beth. It’s just her and Benny now, trapped in the joint scrutiny of the chess world and each other.

“Did you see the number of articles predicting that we’re too competitive and we’re about to get a nasty shock and the marriage will collapse?” Beth asks later when they’re sat in the bar, cold sodas and _Mama Told Me Not To Come_ playing just the right side of too loud. 

“I wouldn’t take that bet,” Benny shrugs. “If we’ve learned nothing else from this, it’s that you and I are stubborn as all hell.”

They clink coke bottles and go back to people watching. Beth is aware that they’re getting a decent amount of attention; while the US Open attracts the top calibre of players, it also draws lower-ranked and amateur players with its bands specifically for them. She’s never encouraged a circle of admirers the way that Benny does but it doesn’t irritate her as much as it used to, and she enjoys sitting back and watching Benny hold court with his easy superior manner over old and new acquaintances. It took her some thinking after Boston, but she’s realised that Benny has monetised Benny Watts as well as his parents ever did, but he’s done it on his own terms. Beth might find the persona a little ridiculous, perhaps even more so than she did before she knew there was someone else underneath it, but she doesn’t judge him for it anymore.

Not that Benny is the only one with interested fans; Beth finds herself fielding perhaps even more interest than Benny. She’s sure she used to be more unapproachable but maybe something about Benny has rubbed off on her, and she does her best to be gracious. Plenty of people want to congratulate them both on their marriage, and a few even edge over nervously with the latest _Chess Life_ – featuring both of them on the cover and a vaguely patronising article about how Vegas might shake out – and ask for autographs. Benny’s signature is enormous and looping, a perfect fit for his meticulous cultivated image, while Beth’s hasn’t moved on much from when she was scribbling it on _Life_ for the more awkward of the high school boys. 

“Have they expanded your ego to unbearable proportions?” Beth asks when they’re back in the safety of their room.

Benny, shorn of his accoutrements and lounging with his feet kicked up on a chair, grins at her. “Tell me that you don’t love their mixture of terror and resentment and admiration. You know that you do. You always have.”

Beth, caught, rolls her eyes and goes to shower.

It’s not until later that Beth realises something else about sharing a room that hadn’t occurred to her. “Are you going to be up half the night with all the lights blazing? Because if you want to keep reading, you can go and sit in the bathroom.”

“Enchanting as that prospect is,” Benny drawls, “I figured I’d try your ludicrously early nights instead. I don’t need the beauty sleep or the extra rest, but what the hell, huh?”

“Maybe you’ll find some modesty if you sleep more than five hours a night,” Beth suggests.

“That’s very sweet of you, Beth, and very wrong,” Benny replies easily.

Beth is meticulously applying cold cream to her face when Benny appears beside her at the sink, hip-checks her over. She hesitates, then carries on smoothing the lotion up her cheeks, while he starts brushing his teeth. What with Benny’s shitty basement bathroom being, well, shitty, and their wildly different opinions of a decent time to go to bed, they’ve never done this, stood side by side getting ready for bed. It feels very different to sharing the space with Jolene, watching Benny squinting at himself in the mirror, smoothing a stray eyebrow hair before he leans down to spit into the sink. It’s another one of those moments that they have periodically, when something entirely mundane happens in their lives and Beth thinks to herself _we’re actually married_.

She leaves Benny rinsing his mouth and goes to get into the bed – which, like everything else in Vegas, is unnecessarily large – choosing the right-hand side because it’s what she prefers. There’s a strange pit of nervousness in the bottom of her stomach which she does her best to ignore, reaching to turn off the bedside lamp and carefully remove her watch, the last thing she does every night. The bathroom light snaps off and Benny walks out; he also likes the right side of the bed, if Beth recalls correctly, but all he does is briefly twist his mouth before crossing to the left side. He doesn’t really like pyjamas much but he’s wearing a t-shirt with his underwear, presumably in concession to her, and Beth is glad and can’t put her finger exactly on why. She lies very still as Benny climbs in, the bed wide enough that they won’t touch unless they both put in the effort, and turns off his own light.

“‘Night, Beth,” he says easily.

Beth swallows. “‘Night, Benny.”

-

The first few days of the Open pass by like they normally do: the matches aren’t too strenuous and for the most part don’t take too long. Beth’s played a couple of her opponents before and can compliment an awkward man from Seattle that he’s improved a lot since they last met. She still wins, but he gets in some elegant captures before she does. One of the new players is a shy seventeen-year-old boy called Glenn who just placed second in Wisconsin’s state championship and whose high school apparently held a bake sale to get him here. His nerves get the better of him, but he makes a few decent moves in there. It’s Beth’s last game of the day, and when she’s won she gets him to meet her in the hotel bar later. She brings her chess set, buys them both 7-Ups and sits there for two and a half hours with Glenn, talking back through the game, asking him constant questions until he stops stammering and looking at his hands and actually starts answering her. There’s a smart kid in there, the makings of a _really_ good player, and Beth watches him make pages of careful pencil notes as they go through exchanges and traps and wonders if one day this will come back to bite her.

Benny arrives as Beth and Glenn are picking apart the net she placed around his king, examining the checkmate from all the angles. He drops onto the banquette beside Beth, slinging an easy arm around her shoulders and smacking a kiss to her cheek.

“Hey, doll.”

Glenn’s eyes grow about three sizes as he takes in Benny, who is resplendent in hat, coat, knife and glittering jewellery. Beth discreetly digs an elbow into Benny’s ribs as she introduces them to each other, hoping he’ll get the _play nice_ message. He probably won’t; Benny is still working through a mental list of petnames for her, and only tends to use them when he’s about to be a dick.

“You lost the state to Becker, right?” Benny says to Glenn. “I read that write-up, it was a pretty good game. You need to strengthen your diagonals, though.”

“You think everyone should strengthen their diagonals,” Beth points out.

“And they should,” Benny shrugs, leaning to grab Beth’s drink. “And don’t take whatever my wife has done to you personally, kid, she steamrolls everyone like that.”

Glenn’s eyes are flicking between the two of them like he’s watching a tennis game. Beth finds herself hoping that he’s got a chess club back at school he can relay all of this to; maybe that’s a little vain of her, but there’s something enjoyable about dazzling this teenager.

“She’s been really helpful, actually,” Glenn pipes up.

Benny raises his eyebrows. “That’s very civic-minded of you, Beth.”

Beth watches him tuck the straw she’s marked with her lipstick into his mouth, and offers sweetly: “if Harry hadn’t helped me out, I’d never have beaten you in Ohio. We don’t all have to treat each other like enemies off the board.”

Benny’s eyes narrow a fraction and Beth smirks, turns back to finish the game analysis with Glenn. It’s lucky that they’re almost done, because while Beth had managed to work off the worst of Glenn’s nerves around her, Benny’s arrival has put a whole bunch of them back; in the end she sends the boy off with a handshake and the hope that he’ll do well in the rest of the tournament, and he stumbles off looking a little stunned.

“When he creams you in a tournament in three years’ time because you turned his under-use of his knights around, you’re going to regret this,” Benny says cheerfully when they’re alone.

“He was sweet,” Beth replies, “and I hate wasted potential.” She turns a glare on Benny. “And if you’re about to suggest I was seducing that teenager-”

“Oh, you’d seduced him completely, but you weren’t doing it deliberately,” Benny shrugs. “He was looking at you the way most guys look at you, like you could punch him in the face and he’d thank you and ask for another.”

Beth is about to retort that Benny has never looked at her that way and then vividly remembers the night they first fucked, when she beat Benny at speed chess over and over and over and he said _no one has done that to me in fifteen years_ and took her to bed moments later.

“Don’t call me ‘doll’ again,” she says instead. “I hate it.”

“Do you hate it more or less than ‘honey’?” Benny asks. “In the interests of scientific enquiry.”

He actually called her ‘honey’ three different times in front of the _Chess Life_ interviewer, and none of them made it into the published article. His annoyance at this was almost worth repeatedly hearing the stupid nickname in the first place.

“I think more,” Beth replies. “But remember that I now know how to break your nose without causing any injury to myself.”

“A tiger on and off the board,” Benny sighs, but he’s smiling while he says it. He flicks Beth’s emptied glass with a fingernail. “Want another?”

As other games finish for the day, people are starting to filter into the bar. Beth can already see at least three other groups replaying matches from earlier, two guys in matching argyle are arguing over a fork in one of the booths, while an older man sits alone, chin propped glumly on one hand while he plays the same sequence through over and over. 

“Sure,” she says, and Benny heads off to order.

What Beth will never tell him and hopes that he’ll never find out is that Benny doesn’t need to work through his saccharine nicknames to ruffle her; all he has to do is call her _my wife_ in that casual way he has.

The days start blurring together like they always do for longer tournaments. Beth catches a few of Benny’s games when she’s not playing, and he turns up to see some of hers, but for the most part they stay on their own paths, names rising steadily up the boards. Benny gets a draw on Thursday afternoon and spends the evening sulking and refusing to play the game back through no matter how many times Beth offers; she goes to bed and he shuts himself in the bathroom with his board, the strip of light still there when Beth half-wakes hours later. Part of Beth is pleased that he’s drawn because it gives her an advantage overall, until Sunday morning when she draws with a grandmaster from Albuquerque. She eventually works out that she played the wrong response to his opening and spends the rest of Sunday in the lido, swimming out the frustrated energy, until she’s not seeing a tangle of gridlocked pawns every time she blinks.

Sometime at the start of the second week, Beth finally finds out that the book on Benny’s nightstand, _The Dragon Variation_ , is not an analysis of the Sicilian but actually a fairly trashy novel based around chess. _Wexler lent it to me, I’m reading it for the matches_ , he drawls, and Beth rolls her eyes because in her brief flick through she’s noted the only female main character has plenty of romantic and sexual misadventures.

“Shouldn’t you be studying?” she asks, arch. “Or are you just planning on finding something to distract me with before the final?”

“You shouldn’t have declined his Queen’s Gambit on Sunday,” Benny responds immediately.

Beth scoffs at him because they both know that she already knows this, and goes to take an extended bath. When she gets out Benny is sitting at the table with his chess board, frowning at the booklet from the Beverwijk tournament earlier this year. 

“Study hard,” she offers; he doesn’t look up from the endgame he’s plotted out, but does respond with his middle finger.

As ever, Beth is reminded that she and Benny work better in enclosed spaces than they logically should. Both of them spend a lot of time lost in individual thought, no need to fill the silence with pointless conversation; they can study separately for hours without disturbing each other. Beth doesn’t pretend she isn’t examining the games Benny’s been playing, and knows that he’s looking at hers. Both of them want to win this tournament and she thinks the tension should be unbearable, but somehow the fact they’ve acknowledged that they want to mercilessly crush each other means that they’re comfortable, no awkwardness. Beth is aware of the attention that they get in public together, the way that everyone is unashamedly looking for cracks, but no one here knows anything close to the truth about them. 

The next time that Beth can catch one of Benny’s matches she makes sure she’s at the front of the group of spectators, and when he wins she’s the one to sweep in and kiss him, swift and hard.

“Look at you winding up the opposition,” Benny tells her later, grin tickling his mouth.

“I’m bored of them watching us like we’re supposed to be openly plotting each other’s murder,” she responds.

“It’s stupid,” Benny agrees. “I’ll just smother you with a pillow in your sleep if that’s necessary.”

Beth’s childhood and adolescence were spent sharing rooms with people, listening to them breathe and snore and murmur in sleep, but somehow in adulthood she’s only ever shared a bed with Benny. Harry had a habit of slinking back to his own room after sex – Beth sees now that she instinctively manipulated the situation so that this would be so – and while Cleo slept in Beth’s bed in Paris, Beth apparently slept in her dress in a half-full bathtub instead. But she shared Benny’s bed on a selection of nights in New York, and now they sleep side by side in Las Vegas. It’s not the same as New York, of course; the bed is larger and comfier, and they don’t have sex before they settle down to sleep. Some nights Beth sleeps quicker than others, and she realises she hasn’t forgotten the rhythm of Benny’s unconscious breathing, the incomprehensible words he sometimes mumbles between one breath and the next. For the most part he still gets up before her, ambling around in his jeans and flowered robe with room service coffee when Beth surfaces, but once or twice she wakes up in the greyish light of dawn and he’s still in bed beside her, golden hair spilled across the pillows. He looks much younger in sleep, missing the spark he has when he’s awake, but missing the tension too. Beth watches him for a little while in the half-dark, this man she married who still remains part stranger, but whom she also knows so well that she remembers lessons at Methuen, people made of each other’s ribs.

It’s easy to stay in this tournament limbo, every day full of chess games, every evening a quiet studious domesticity, but the fact is that with each victory both of them step closer to the final, and then all bets are off.

-

Benny is the first to make it through to the final; Beth follows half an hour later, her opponent taking a long time to finally concede. There’s very little surprise among the other Open attendees, but there is a buzz of excitement about the next day’s match. Benny arrives to watch Beth win her game, and he pulls her into an embrace, calling _congratulations, baby_ loud enough that no one on the entire floor can possibly miss it.

“I am going to fucking destroy you,” he whispers in Beth’s ear as he holds her, the words for her alone.

“Not if I destroy you first,” Beth responds, equally soft, and smacks a kiss to his cheek for their audience.

They have dinner in their room, bored of everyone’s scrutiny, and afterwards Benny eyes her thoughtfully.

“We should go out,” he says.

“Is this your way of sabotaging me for tomorrow?” Beth asks.

“We’ll be back by midnight, a good night’s sleep for us both,” Benny replies. “Will that do?”

Beth considers this. She could keep studying, but she’s playing _Benny_ , and she’s not sure there’s much more she can cram into her brain. She already knows how he plays, and how she plays, and the rest is down to more luck than either of them would like. “We’re in Vegas,” she tells him. “One of us can’t gamble and one of us can’t drink; what else is there to do?”

This is how Beth finds herself in a dance club the night before her US Open Final, accompanied by her opponent, who also happens to be her husband. She wears a new dress she hasn’t found an excuse to wear yet, a rich indigo sleeveless drop waist that she pairs with bold dark eye make-up and low-heeled sandals. Benny’s wearing a soft mid-green shirt she’s not sure she’s ever seen before; it’s not new but it’s more colour than she’s used to seeing on him. The club is larger than the Parisian one was and decorated in a lot more gold, cheesy Vegas all the way, but there’s a live band and they’re good and Benny doesn’t abandon her to the dancefloor this time but comes with her, pulls her close, hips and hands and laughter entwining.

No one else from the Open is here, and if anyone recognises either of them they don’t let on; there’s a peaceful anonymity after all these days of pressure and scrutiny. Beth and Benny are just another of the young couples on the dancefloor, buoyed up by noise and light, free to be anyone at all. Benny becomes someone else here: not her husband, not her rival, just a handsome young man she’s enjoying dancing with, one who neither offers nor asks for more than she can cope with. His body moves and so does hers and that’s all that needs to make sense here.

Later, they drink cold cokes and sit at one of the nightclub tables, watching the people still dancing, the other groups and couples at the surrounding tables. Benny is a little flushed, his hair untidy in a way that would probably annoy him if he knew, the lights shining off his necklaces in a way that makes Beth want to reach out and touch them. She knows that that’s just an effect of the night, of the easy proximity, and reminds herself of Paris, of how it felt when Benny slammed into his bedroom and left her behind. They work surprisingly well together, better than she expected when she agreed to this marriage, but there are some things that don’t work between them and the trick is not to reach for those.

“I thought it would be harder, coming back to Vegas,” she admits. “After everything that happened here.”

“It’s a different place now,” Benny replies. “You’re not coming back to relive your first defeats.”

Beth nods thoughtfully, and then realises that Benny said _defeats_. “You were the only person I lost to,” she tells him.

“Something happened here,” Benny shrugs. “I told you, I knew you were upset long before I rocked up to tell you shouldn’t have castled.”

Sometimes Beth can still recall what it was like in that hotel room, how she walked in feeling like an adult and left feeling like a child. It’s not Townes’ fault and she accepts that now, that there’s a fondness between them that neither of them truly understood for years, but she was a young woman with a crush she’d been nurturing for years and her heart felt truly broken, a terrible adolescent shattering.

Benny isn’t asking explicitly but his gaze is fixed on her face, probably reading the emotions as Beth’s mind wanders through them. “Townes,” she says at last, and it’s almost worth the effort it takes to say that for the way Benny’s eyebrows lift in surprise. After that, it’s easier to add: “I wanted… and he didn’t.”

It takes Benny a moment to reply; he drains the last of his coke and fidgets with his ring, brow furrowed in the way it does when he’s slotting things into place.

“I did wonder when that happened,” he says, as though Beth has ever mentioned _any_ of the feelings she had for Townes to him, as though this is something casually always known between them. “I imagine you’re not the first woman to make that misinterpretation.” 

Beth stays carefully quiet: she’s been carrying Townes’ secret for years and she doesn’t want to say the wrong thing now, just in case.

Benny’s mouth curls at the corners. “One of these days, you’re going to believe me when I tell you I know everything about everyone. Really, I should’ve figured it out when I saw those pictures he took of you, but I didn’t realise they were from the Vegas Open.” He leans over and gently taps the face of Beth’s watch. “Come on, we’ve got a little time before we spontaneously turn into pumpkins.”

He takes Beth’s hand and she lets him lead her back onto the dancefloor, where there is no past and no future, just the music and the rhythm and the warmth of skin bleeding through each other’s clothes.

-

A trickle of sweat runs down Beth’s spine and for the third time in the last minute she wonders if the air conditioning has somehow stopped working. A covert glance beneath her lashes at the spectators tells her that she’s the only one feeling too warm, and she snaps her waning focus back to the board. 

The middle game is moving painfully slowly. Benny is playing White to Beth’s Black, and any hopes anyone had of a quick definitive victory have vanished. Beth is currently in possession of all but one of Benny’s pawns, and Benny has both her knights, both of her bishops, and a rook. Benny checked with his queen on move 34 and Beth shifted her rook to intercept it; she was half-expecting him to capture her rook but instead he’s moved his queen to safety and she’s left trying to decide how to proceed. She still has eight pieces left on the board to Benny’s six, but five of hers are pawns. _All pawns and no hope_ drawls a past Benny, and she flexes her shoulders, perhaps trying to shake off his ghost.

Beth moves her rook to meet his queen; maybe he’ll capture, but if he does she can take his queen, and he has no way to take hers in return. She reaches to hit his clock and picks up her half-empty water glass, manages a shaky sip. Everything is simultaneously very vivid and very far away: she can feel where her thin white blouse is starting to stick to her skin, where her heart is beating a little too hard against her ribs. She wishes she’d thought to wear a scarf to keep her hair back: every tickle of it against her face is like a tiny shock.

She risks a look at Benny, even though she knows what every one of his chess-playing expressions means and no interpretation has ever helped her work out which move he’s contemplating. He’s still in his hat, covering most of his face, but his coat has been relegated to the back of his chair and he’s rolled up his shirtsleeves. Beth can’t remember when he did that, wasn’t paying attention to anything but the board, but now her gaze is drawn to the muscles bunching in his forearms, the fine golden hairs caught under the bright lights. She swallows, and fights not to reach for her water glass again.

Benny’s fingers flex, and he moves his queen one more space to momentary safety. He restarts her clock and Beth looks at the time for a moment; they seem to have been playing for hours, years, maybe, but somehow there is still so much time _left_. She moves her rook to match him, firm and decisive, Benny can be the one to choose if he wants to be reckless or not. She doesn’t look at him as she starts his clock again, keeps her gaze on the board. He hesitates, fingers twitching above the pieces, then moves his queen down the diagonal toward his own rows, hits Beth’s clock again. Beth pushes a pawn, one of the few safe options she still has, and throws decision-making back into Benny’s lap.

This morning, Beth woke up with a pleasing soreness from dancing last night and relaxed from a mercifully unbroken night’s sleep. Sunlight was spilling into the room from a crack in the drapes, and when she rolled over she found Benny was still in bed beside her, expression sleep-crumpled and a little disoriented. They exchanged half-awake smiles and it felt normal – far more normal than it should have done – to be waking up beside each other in their bed. Beth beat Benny to the shower and he’d ordered breakfast when she got out; she drank coffee while she carefully dried her hair and listened to him whistling in the bathroom. They knew the final was today, that they both wanted to win, but neither of them felt the need to mention it. Benny wandered the room in his jeans with his wet hair dripping onto his shoulders and Beth tore holes in two pairs of pantyhose before deciding to go bare-legged with her neat black skirt, and they half-watched each other build themselves back into Beth Harmon and Benny Watts with lipstick and a knife and poise and swagger.

Now, Benny moves his knight to capture one of Beth’s remaining pawns, and she moves another pawn to kick at his other knight. Benny responds by moving his free knight to endanger Beth’s queen, and this time she’s the one who moves to check.

Beth risks a look at Benny, watches his lips press together and his Adam’s apple bob. She looks back at the board, something in her stomach jumping, and not just because she can already see what his next move will inevitably be.

Benny moves his queen next to hers; Beth takes it, and he takes her queen with his bishop. An exchange of queens, and Beth cannot look at him right now, heart pressed up against her ribs.

As she contemplates her next move, Beth shifts in her chair, and realises in shock that she’s wet. Wet enough for her underwear to feel cold and slick, like she’s been sitting here not noticing her arousal for a while. Now that she does, the twisting heat in the bottom of her stomach makes sense, the way everything feels too much, from the smooth varnish on the wooden chess pieces to the way her water glass clinks against her teeth. Every time she looks at Benny it gets worse, and she wonders if her face is half as flushed as she feels. 

This _isn’t fair_. Beth can play chess through any and all emotions, has won drugged and won drunk and won angry and won upset. She suddenly remembers an article she once read about a female chess player who was in the first pangs of love and withdrew from a tournament because she was so distracted and knew she couldn’t play, and Beth pitied her, congratulated herself on how she’d never fall prey to anything like that. But now she sits here with hundreds of eyes on her and every time she looks at the man sitting opposite her she feels more like she’s going to burst out of her skin any second. She takes in a slow breath through her nose, then another one, and instead of calming her all she can smell is Benny’s cologne, the one that’s filled their hotel room, their apartment, her life this year.

Squeezing her thighs together and praying she can pull together some focus, Beth moves her rook to fork Benny’s knights, hopes that she just looks like she’s concentrating hard on the game and nothing else. She could take a bathroom break, there’s enough time on her clock: she could splash cold water on her face and neck, take a few breaths without an audience, and maybe even- she screws her eyes shut, forcibly pushing away the mental image of locking herself in a bathroom stall, sliding a hand into her sodden underwear, trying to take the edge off this badly-timed desire. She _can’t_ leave the game to do that, and she certainly wouldn’t be able to come back afterwards even if nobody knew. It occurs to her that Benny would know, and somehow that thought is worse than all of the other ones.

When she trusts herself to open her eyes again, Benny is pulling one of his knights to safety. There’s the slightest of shakes in his hand; so subtle Beth’s sure that no one watching can tell, but she has played hundreds of games against him by now. She nudges her rook forward another row, stalking her prey like the tiger Benny likes to refer to her as, and gives him another covert look. She still can’t see most of his expression, the hat tilted over his face, but he’s leaning forward enough that his barely buttoned shirt is gaping open more than usual, necklaces shining against the bared skin, and Beth thinks she catches sight of a nipple. For some reason, this is her final straw; she curls her fingers into her palms, digs her nails in hard, hoping this will clear her mind. Yes, Beth enjoys sex, and she’s been alone for a long time – but she’s an adult, she knows perfectly well how to run herself a hot bath and where to touch to elicit a decent and efficient orgasm. She’s never been distracted like this before and it’s frustrating and embarrassing and just plain fucking _stupid_.

Benny rescues his other knight and some automatic part of Beth responds by snapping up his remaining pawn. He reaches to take one of hers with his bishop and Beth looks back at their clocks to see that no matter how crawlingly slow this game feels, there’s still too long left. She doesn’t know how to win, doesn’t know how to corral her remaining pieces to back Benny into a corner, doesn’t know anything right now except that she wants to be somewhere else where no one at all can see her. Benny is fidgeting with his rings, first with the signet, then with the wedding, then back to the signet again. Beth looks at those fingers and thinks about them closing around her arms, thinks about them sliding inside her, thinks about them lacing with hers as he pulled her onto the dancefloor last night. She’d assume it was a deliberate tactic of his, to take her out and get her thoroughly confused, except that if that were the case Benny would have won by now, wouldn’t be playing with his jewellery, his mouth working like it does when he’s trapped and annoyed.

Finally, Beth moves a pawn to kick Benny’s bishop. She’s not sure it’s the smartest move but she can’t see a better one. She won’t concede and she doesn’t want to lose but she can see them circling around each other on this board the way they circle around each other in reality, closer and closer but never close enough. They’ve been pretending to be in a relationship for six months now, false smiles and connected hands and meaningless kisses – except that no matter how many times they kiss, claiming each time that it’s nothing new, it’s as simple as actors pretending, it never gets any easier. Every time Benny kisses her, Beth never wants him to stop, that strange sharp lust they discovered while needling each other at the US Open in Sixty-Seven stringing on and on, sometimes worse but never better.

Benny licks his lips and Beth’s gaze is drawn to them; she’s probably openly staring but she can’t stop herself, it’s all she can do to sit still in her wet underwear, glad that her skirt is dark so the damp won’t show, teeth gritted and knuckles whitening.

“Adjourn,” Benny says, his voice strained and breaking on the single word.

Relief floods through Beth’s body, though as she relaxes a little she realises just how sensitive and shaky she is, and she’s glad Benny cracked because she wouldn’t and even if she would she doesn’t trust herself to speak.

Murmuring breaks out amongst the spectators, soft but still too loud in Beth’s ringing ears, and she watches Benny accept a pad and pen, scribble down his next move. When it’s been sealed in an official envelope until tomorrow, Beth gets up and leaves, not looking at anyone, tunnel vision for the nearest elevator so she can shut herself in her room until this all stops, until she has a plan for what the hell she’s going to do.

-

Once the hotel room door slams behind her Beth pulls off her sandals, throwing them aside, and frantically undoes the top half of her blouse’s buttons. It doesn’t really help but her mind feels thick and panicked and wanting, and she’s free-falling so hard she can’t think about what she wants or needs to do right now. There’s a chess board laid out on the table, pieces neatly set up for a game, and the thought of trying to recreate the ugly mess they’ve been building downstairs is like a blow to the head. Beth leans on the table, looking down at the pieces all smugly lined up, hair falling around her hot cheeks. She closes her eyes and takes a few deep sharp breaths, looking for a clarity she no longer seems to possess.

Beth jumps when the hotel room door bangs open and, right, this isn’t her private room. She spins around to find Benny standing hesitantly in the doorway before he takes a step inside and lets the door close behind him.

“I’ll talk to the hotel,” he says raggedly, “I don’t want anyone thinking we were colluding all night to organise the game’s outcome, they’ll have another room I can sleep in.”

She just stares at him, at his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his leather coat, his gaze darting around and never landing on her.

“‘Colluding’?” she echoes.

“We probably shouldn’t be up here together now,” Benny tells her, “you know what gossips chess players are, they’ll accuse us of rigging the game.”

The edge of the table is digging into the back of Beth’s legs and she can’t look away from Benny biting his lips together, throat working.

“Is that what they’re thinking?” Beth asks. “That we’ve come up here and sat down with the board to do that all over again?”

Benny’s shoulders, already tense, seem to stiffen further. “Beth,” he says thickly.

“Everyone’s favourite newlyweds, diligently working to cheat,” Beth continues recklessly for the way Benny’s expression tightens. “Playing endless games of chess all night. That’s what they’re all thinking.”

“Don’t,” Benny manages, barely above a whisper.

Beth reaches blindly behind her and shoves the game off the table, the board hitting the floor louder than she expected, pieces flying everywhere, and she doesn’t even blink.

“Beth.” He sounds like he’s pleading now.

She’s only half aware of what she’s doing but she can’t stay _feeling_ like this, can’t sit down at that table tomorrow to keep playing this fucking shitshow of a game if she spends tonight pacing this room while somewhere else in this hotel Benny paces his. She _can’t_.

“Benny,” she says, a tease and a taunt and a challenge and a request, all of it and none of it. She leans back on her hands, cocks a hip.

“Fuck.” Benny bites off the word, swift and hard, ripping his gaze from hers. “ _Fuck_.”

Beth says nothing, and waits.

This cannot be their careers, the couple who can no longer play against each other because stick them both under the spotlight with everything on the line and they’re both so turned on they can’t focus, there’s probably some kind of damage control they’ll have to concoct after this, but Beth doesn’t care. Benny tosses his hat aside, shrugs out of his coat and tosses that too, maybe the only time she’s ever seen him _not_ lovingly hang it up, and Beth realises why he put it back on for the trip back upstairs: in his already obscenely tight jeans the outline of his erection is painfully clear, much less easy to hide than Beth’s sticky underwear. It takes him maybe four strides to clear the space between them, to pull Beth away from the table and crush their mouths together.

Considering it all with hindsight, Beth thought that there would never be anything like their first time together: Beth had neatly stripped Benny of his ego and his rent money in front of his friends and his ex-girlfriend, teasing because she enjoyed the reluctant admiration in his eyes, the way he came back for more even though he knew he shouldn’t, pushing it because she wanted to, because she was still smarting from him telling her to forget about sex. When they finally came together it was like a wildfire, passionate and furious and urgent, hands and teeth and skin and need blurring together. It was damn good on several occasions after that, but nothing was like that first time, twisted to a fever pitch.

This is worse than that, worse than _anything_ ; Beth thinks Benny might be trying to devour her whole and she’s only too willing to let him, sharing deep hungry kisses that make her lips hurt, her arms wound around his neck with her hand fisted in his hair so he can’t get away from her, can’t pull back this time. His hands are on her hips where, as always, they fit like that’s the only place they’re supposed to be, gripping too hard and it’s _perfect_. Benny’s teeth sink into her lower lip and Beth hears herself gasp, his tongue pressing to the sore spot for a moment before he does it again; she pulls his hair in response, wanting as much sensation as possible, wanting him to overwhelm her entirely.

When their hips collide Benny groans into Beth’s mouth, a desperate sound she wants to capture and keep forever, and he grinds against her, cock hard against her hip, hands skimming up her sides to pull her blouse free from where it’s been tucked into her skirt. His hands are warm against her ribs and Beth pushes into them, still claiming greedy, breathless kisses that she can’t get enough of, isn’t sure she’ll ever be able to get enough of. She wants Benny touching her everywhere, every inch of her that sat through that damn game shivering with sheer mindless _want_ , making a broken sound of her own when his thumb grazes the underside of her bra. Benny staggers a little where she’s pressed up against him and Beth ends up pushed into the table again; she takes the time to pull away and drag Benny’s stupid shirt up and off, he undoes so many buttons it’s barely worth him even bothering to _wear_ it, every part of his exposed chest a reminder that Beth knows exactly what his skin feels like. 

Momentarily separated, Benny stares at Beth. His eyes are so, so dark, pupils blown wide and black, and her red lipstick is smeared all over his face; she suspects that she looks similar and it would be funny except that Beth likes that she’s marked him like this, like when he kissed her in Boston but _more_ , wearing the slightest smudge of her mouth in all the victory photographs they took of him. He’s panting, the breath kissed out of him, and all Beth can think is something incoherent and needy before he leans down again, lips parting against her neck. Beth lets herself touch him, all that warm bared skin just for her, fingers tangling with his necklaces, mapping her territory. When she runs light nails up his back Benny groans, sucks the skin over her pulse until she’s the one groaning, the table creaking ominously behind and beneath her.

Beth leans back further, opens her legs so Benny can stand between them, and there’s too many layers, the denim of Benny’s jeans rasping against the lighter fabric of her skirt, both of them too frantic to find a good angle. Everything is too much and not enough, Benny kissing the sensitive skin behind her ear because he knows that undoes her, Beth refamiliarising herself with every jump of his back muscles under her palms, the way his breath shudders when she grabs him just right. The table makes another worrying sound and Benny pulls Beth against him just in time for it to crash to the floor too, much louder than the chess set was. Beth doesn’t even try to look, just drags Benny’s swollen mouth back to hers as he pushes her until her back thumps into the wall. This is better: Benny can pin her there, hips grinding, and Beth can concentrate on kissing him breathless, drinking every sound he makes when his cock slides against her.

It’s too soon when Benny pulls away, swiping the back of his hand across his face in a way that doesn’t do a whole lot for the lipstick she’s gotten all over him, and sinks to his knees. Beth’s breath catches in her chest as he runs his hands up her legs, leaving trails of gooseflesh everywhere he touches, until he can hook his fingers in her drenched underwear and pull them down. Beth barely gets a chance to step free before he’s rolling up her skirt, smudging open-mouthed kisses up the inside of her thighs, his facial hair tickling her skin. She tries to reach to undo her skirt but Benny is already pressing her hips harder into the wall with one hand and squeezing the back of her leg with the other until she shifts and he can throw one of her thighs over his shoulder. 

Beth’s head thuds back hard enough for it to hurt when Benny buries his face in her wet cunt; she lets out a ragged helpless noise as her nails scrape the wall behind her, a shred of the wallpaper catching beneath one, and this room will have that little torn imperfection when they’re gone, a reminder that Beth stood right here while Benny ate her like a starving man. He’s a slim guy, downright skinny from certain angles, but there’s a strength in the way he supports her body, shoulder pressing into her thigh to keep her spread wide so he can kiss her as thoroughly between her legs as he did her mouth. Beth wants to see him but her bunched-up skirt is in the way; she gropes until she can knot her fingers in the back of his hair, an extra point of connection like her skin isn’t burning everywhere they touch already. Benny groans against her and the feel of it is glorious; Beth hears herself whining, can’t seem to stop, and Benny runs his tongue the length of her cunt before he concentrates on sucking her clit and it’s so much that she has to screw her eyes shut, colours exploding across her vision.

She tries to shift her hips but the angle is all wrong, and Benny’s grip tightens to hold her still and maybe also upright; she resigns herself to staying put while he laps at her, lips and tongue and the slightest briefest hint of teeth. At least he isn’t teasing, they’re so far beyond that, and she’s been tense for so long that it’s almost a surprise when the want in her stomach finally uncoils and bursts, Benny’s tongue sliding inside her enough to finally crack her open and she comes, shouting something incoherent, clutching at his hair tight enough to make him whimper, the vibrations only making the whole thing better.

When Beth can open her eyes again Benny is still kneeling in front of her, grinning up at her fierce and wild and just a little smug. His face is shining with her arousal and his mouth is pink from friction and the remains of her lipstick, and he looks so good and so perfect that Beth can’t believe for a second that this is happening, that they haven’t been doing this constantly for _years_.

“Get up here,” she manages shakily and Benny pushes himself upright, knees cracking, grin spreading, and Beth’s the one to pull him into her and kiss the taste of herself from his lips. Benny’s the only person she’s ever done this with; well, Benny’s the only person who’s ever done anything to her that wasn’t disappointing missionary, and the first time he made her come with his mouth Beth thought she might be about to die, the sensation was so good and so much. He didn’t kiss her afterwards, seemed careful about leaning away from her, but Beth thought about it and decided she didn’t care and kissed _him_ instead, enjoying the startled sound he made against her lips as she explored their joined tastes with her tongue. It’s been years since they last did this but it hasn’t changed; Benny clutches her against him and Beth lets him hold her upright, her legs trembling with aftershocks.

“Bed?” Benny suggests eventually and Beth nods. When he pulls away from her and she looks around she can see where they’ll be paying the hotel for a new table and it’s possible that she’ll owe Benny a new chessboard too, but none of that matters right now as Beth fumbles for the zipper of her skirt and lets it fall around her feet. She’ll never be able to wear it again but that seems like a small sacrifice for the sound Benny makes as he looks at her, watches her open the last few buttons of her blouse and throw that aside too. She nods at him and his hands fall to his jeans, to where his cock is somehow even more pronounced. Beth swallows, and wants, and it takes her three goes to unhook her bra, kicking a pawn out of the way as she walks across to sprawl on top of the covers.

Benny looks down at her for what feels like an endless moment, lips parted and eyes huge, before Beth reaches out a hand and he takes it, lets her drag him down on top of her. His warm weight is comforting, skin against skin everywhere, and Beth rubs her sore hard nipples against his chest for the sleek friction, hooks a leg around his. His cock presses into her stomach and he sucks in a breath through his teeth when Beth rolls her hips.

“Not yet,” he murmurs, pulling back enough to cup one of her breasts, his hair a wreck from her hands. He circles her nipple with his thumb and Beth whines, encouraging, and he watches her avidly, the way he does when he’s trying a new chess move for the first time, memorising every detail to think about later. 

“ _Benny_ ,” Beth demands, impatient; her orgasm has not only failed to take the edge off but has made the desperate hunger inside her _worse_ , every second Benny isn’t all over her is a second wasted. Benny rolls his eyes, expression fond, but then he ducks down to take her other nipple into his mouth and that’s _better_ , that’s so much better; Beth squirms against him until he shifts to do the same thing to the other one, hands caressing everywhere his lips aren’t, and maybe later Beth will be ashamed of the noises he draws out of her but right now she doesn’t care in the slightest.

Benny finally eases away from her breasts, smoothing messy kisses down her chest, her ribs, her stomach. Beth finally realises where he’s headed when he pauses to suck a bruise into her right hip.

“I _can’t_ ,” she tells him, “not so soon.”

“You fucking well can,” Benny responds, hard. “You sat opposite me for that whole game with your pink cheeks and sparkling eyes and luscious goddamn _mouth_ and all I could think about was what if I crawled under the table in front of all those people and stuck my face between your thighs, would it finally crack your poise if I put my tongue inside you, just round and round in my head for forty-four fucking moves.”

Beth sucks a breath into lungs that seem to have forgotten how to. “Maybe you should’ve done it,” she says.

“Next time,” he replies, a threat and a promise, and oh _fuck_ , they have to go back tomorrow and play through the wreckage of that stupid game, and none of it matters because Benny is pushing her lipstick-and-desire-smeared thighs apart to lay butterfly-soft kisses on and around her cunt, half teasing, half worship.

It’s almost too much, the warmth of his mouth, the pressure of his tongue; Beth moans and tries to shift away and he throws an arm over her stomach to hold her in place, bites the inside of her thigh in a way that has her shuddering. Her hands return to his hair, to his stupid blonde hair that falls over his face in a way she hates that she’s always found mesmerising, and she tugs him closer to where she wants him, breath tumbling out of her when he gives in and runs his tongue over her clit. Beth has no idea if he’s good at this in the grand scheme of things, if there are other men out there who could get between her thighs and make her feel _better_ than this, but she can’t imagine it, can’t imagine anything that could feel more incredible than Benny thoroughly and insistently working her over with his mouth, responding to every sound she makes. He’s more unhurried this time and it takes longer but it’s worth it as he slowly fucks her with his tongue, transforming every tug on his hair into a low groan that she can _feel_ , writhing against his face with gradual heat unfurling through her whole body.

She swears repeatedly, the words spilling into each other until they’re meaningless, Benny relentless and determined no matter what sound she lets out; _c’mon_ he whispers before he wraps his lips around her clit, sucking sharp and hard and so _good_ , and Beth’s back arches off the bed when she comes for him, shivers of hot and cold running through her whole body. His hands are all over her, soothing her through it, and when she can breathe again she pulls him in for a sticky kiss, his bruised lips tender against hers. She reaches down his body, curls her hand around his cock, remembering the way he likes to be touched. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he groans, pulling away from her mouth to bury his face in the curve of her shoulder. His sweat-damp hair against her cheek, Beth carries on working his cock, his entire body twitching, breath erratic. She can feel where he’s leaking onto her stomach, how his hips rock in increments toward her, and even over-sensitive and a little shaky, she _wants_.

“Benny-” she begins, and he shakes his head, face still buried in her neck.

“We _can’t_ ,” he tells her.

Beth stills, lets go of him. “If you don’t want-”

“I _want_ ,” Benny cuts her off, voice tight, raising his head for her to see his flushed face, his bright dark eyes, “but I don’t have a rubber. Do you?” 

There’s a sharpness in his demand but Beth can tell there’s no real anger in it; more frustrated desire, and _fuck_ , why didn’t either of them see this coming? For a moment she thinks about telling him they should do it anyway, she wants him inside her that damn much, but he’s right: they can’t do this without protection, all it takes is one time and a pregnancy would be inconvenient for Benny but would derail her entire life. Beth shuts her eyes and scrabbles for contingency plans: there must be drugstores nearby, or maybe they can ring the front desk, it’s Vegas, but then Beth thinks about sitting on the phone and asking someone to bring up a condom so she can fuck her husband and no, nope, it makes something inside her fold over and die. 

Benny has a strip of condoms that he doesn’t use in his nightstand in New York, and they are two thousand miles away and he didn’t bring them with him; why would he have done? Their marriage isn’t a real one.

“Okay,” Beth says slowly, both of them aware that the wrong word could crack this apart now an edge of reality has intruded, “tell me what you need.”

Benny curls his fingers around her wrist, pulls her hand back to wrap it around his cock. “Are you sure?” Beth asks. “I can return the favour.”

“Your mouth is going to be very busy,” Benny informs her solemnly, and then he’s kissing her again, another one of those deep, insatiable kisses that Beth feels right down to her bones. She concentrates on trying to keep an even rhythm with her hand while Benny sucks her tongue and nips at her lips and generally drives her insane. He lets out little moans periodically, the head of his cock brushing against her from time to time, and Beth squeezes harder, wanting to feel him come for her, it’s been so long since she last made him fall apart.

He pulls away from their kiss in the end, panting for air, and hisses her name before he’s spilling over her fist, splashing her stomach, eyes open until they screw closed. Beth watches him, the way everything but pleasure falls from his face, a memory she picks up and swiftly puts back down again from time to time. He looks just as good as he always did.

The silence is suddenly very loud; Beth thinks she can hear her heart pounding, or maybe that’s his, and their breathing is erratic and overlapping and messy. Sweat is cooling on her skin but Benny is warm everywhere that they touch, and Beth wants him to kiss her again and knows that he won’t. This moment is a bubble, one that will burst any second, and neither of them know how to stop it.

“You can take first shower,” Benny offers at last, his voice a low rasp, and Beth doesn’t want to pull out of his arms even with her stomach covered in dried come and her thighs starting to stick together. Everything becomes too real when she gets off this bed, they go back to being themselves, and there’s a US Open final adjourned downstairs that they still have to play through tomorrow, sexual tension broken but everything else still intact.

“Thanks,” she says and disentangles herself from him, doesn’t look back when she heads for the bathroom because she’s not sure what she’ll do if she does.

Beth turns up the shower to burning hot, is brisk and efficient about getting herself clean, her soapy hands uncovering a range of places where she’ll have bruises and marks tomorrow; she hopes there’s something in her wardrobe that will cover everything, this has all been humiliating enough. She scrubs at her face, the remnants of lipstick and her smudged mascara sloughing off easily, and carefully washes herself between her legs, her every touch reminding her of Benny. She feels sore and wrung-out and fragile and holy, she’s not had orgasms like that in years, not even the most vivid memory was accurate against how good Benny can make her feel, but they can’t hide in this hotel room forever.

Benny offers her a rueful smile and Beth keeps her eyes on his face as they exchange places, the bathroom door locking behind him.

Both the overturned table and the chess board are cracked, but Benny has uprighted them, all the scattered pieces laid out neatly, and if you narrow your eyes to the damage then maybe none of this happened after all. Beth gathers her sweaty clothes from earlier, bundles them up and shoves them into the hotel room trash can, spends a moment running a fingertip over the streak of missing wallpaper, and then pulls on a pair of casual slacks and a simple t-shirt, pushes her feet into loafers.

Annoying though it is, Benny is right: Beth isn’t sure how long they’ve been holed up here, whether it was minutes or hours, but she doesn’t want everyone thinking that they’re working out how to play through the game _or_ that they’re so unprofessional that they had to drop everything and come up here for sex. It’s proximity, Beth thinks; they’ve just had each other these last two weeks, if Townes or Levertov or the twins were here, this wouldn’t have happened, they’d have remembered the real world and their place in it. She and Benny need to be seen in public, need to be seen apart so that everyone knows that they’re serious about the final tomorrow, that nothing has changed.

She ties up her untidy hair, grabs a notebook and a strategy book at random, and heads out into the main hotel before the shower water shuts off. To do anything else would be dangerous, would be impossible.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been making up all of their competitors with name generators rather than include real chess people from the time to confuse myself. Christine is based on [Lisa Lane](https://www.si.com/more-sports/2018/12/17/lisa-lane-hou-yifan-womens-chess-gender-inequality-world-championships) who I became obsessed with after reading about real women's chess in the 60s - the article I've just linked is well worth a look. The game Benny plays in the final in Boston is [this](https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1107032) Tal vs Petrosian game from 1974, and the game Beth and Benny play in their final in Vegas is [this](https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1067317) Karpov vs Kasparov game from 1991.

**Author's Note:**

> It's not a specific soundtrack for this fic, but I've been working on [this](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4yfvJ5vUTM4gcUSYkyFDsD?si=XC7B1JKfQrqCAhwRUss8oQ) Beth/Benny playlist and listening to it for a bunch of the writing, if you want ship jams.


End file.
